Creators are increasingly being brought in not just to spread a campaign, but also to help shape what is actually made. They contribute ideas on formats, angles and how a story can land within their own community.

That doesn’t mean the social strategy now lies with the creator. As a social-first agency, we bring our knowledge of strategy, platforms, creation and performance. A creator adds something else: a day-to-day relationship with a specific community and their own way of making content. It’s exactly that combination that makes it interesting.

Traditionally, an influencer comes in relatively late in the campaign process. The brand and agency have already set the strategy and concept and then look for someone with the right audience to carry the message further. With a creator-focused approach, that collaboration can start earlier.

Strategy and creative direction stay with the brand and agency, but within that process you can make room for input from creators. Which topics resonate with their followers? What questions do they get? And which angle would feel natural within their community? That way, you use not only their reach but also their perspective.

A recent example is the American restaurant chain Chipotle. For its campaign Behind the Foil, the brand let a hundred creators make their own content in its restaurants. Instead of giving everyone the same script and shot list, the creators were free to film from their own perspective. The footage was then used both on social and in the wider campaign.

That is a fairly far-reaching form of co-creation, but the principle behind it is interesting: creators aren’t only brought in once the campaign is finished. They become part of the making process.

We also see opportunities to take that step in our own work. For Hans im Glück, the burger restaurant, we worked with several micro-influencers last month, for example. In that same month, we saw the views grow.

In a next collaboration, we could not only bring in such a creator to make and spread content, but also involve them earlier. What kind of food content do they see working well? What do their followers respond to? And which side of Hans im Glück would they find interesting to show? We can then combine that input with our own strategy, platform knowledge and performance data.

At Spaarne Gasthuis we saw a different form of this. For one production, we invited a former patient to take part in the videos. That way, the experience was told by someone who had actually been a patient. The approach was still fairly traditional: the concept and briefing were set, and the former patient then became part of the production.

A great next step could be to talk to someone with that kind of experience a little earlier. What questions did they have as a patient? Which topics matter to them? What would they have liked to see from the hospital at the time?

This lets you gather insights within a client’s community before the content is fully developed. And that community doesn’t always have to consist of influencers. It can just as well be patients, employees, students, customers or other people with first-hand experience.

Of course, this doesn’t mean we should come up with every campaign together with creators from now on. Sometimes the concept is set and you simply need the right creator to bring the story to the right audience. What’s interesting is that there are more options than just that traditional model. We can use creators for reach, make them part of our content, or involve them earlier to hear what’s going on in their community.

So the question for a next campaign isn’t just:

Which creators are a good fit?

But also:

At what moment can they add something?

Because if you involve creators earlier, you not only get more out of the collaboration, you also get closer to the community you want to reach as a brand.