Is 2026 the year of the creator?

2016 also marked the heyday of the influencer. It was the era of people like Zoella and the rest of the Brit Youtuber clan; it saw the peak of apps such as Vine and Twitter. It marked the beginning of a culture that shifted content creators into celebrities and live TV into streaming and the internet.

Though brands began experimenting with influencers as neat, supplementary ‘add-ons’ to their marketing strategies, traditional advertising was still very much the norm. At the time, influencers were largely seen as amplifiers of brand ideas, rather than the originators themselves.

Specsavers, for instance, gained massive traction over the 2000s and 2010s for its enduring ad line: “Should have gone to Specsavers” - a slogan that still exists in our everyday slang. John Lewis’ adverts similarly became cultural events in their own right, with the public sitting in anticipation each year to see what concept the brand would unveil next. These campaigns reflect a polished, agency-led creative strategy and highlight how previously, influencers were not necessarily central to the process.

A decade on, this polished approach has increasingly taken a back-seat, with the more “relatable” angle of the everyday person becoming preferable for a brand. Where once celebrities may have hidden the ‘ugly’ parts of their life in favor of presenting a somewhat unattainable image of themselves, the trends that we see go viral on platforms such as TikTok and Instagram are situated within this space of ‘relatability’.

Alix Earle, the American social-media personality who gained her popularity through her candid and messy tales of her life at UMiami exemplifies this feat most effectively, that being: people are influenced by those they can trust. No longer can brands create campaigns from their high-rise offices, separate from the consumers. They must create social personalities for themselves, be at one with the people so to say.

In this sense, marketing has become democratized - it’s a place where the people who actually use the products can shape the way they are perceived. As a result, brands are having to work harder than ever to build trust, whereas creators gain trust with ease. Therefore, trust is borrowed, built and reinforced through people rather than campaigns.

Despite this shift, many brands remain hesitant to fully embrace the world of ‘creator-marketing’. For organisations that have built their credibility and fortune upon the building blocks of control, consistency and polish, handing the narrative over to individuals feels risky - especially when it’s an emerging market.

That being said, the creator space has evolved significantly. It’s shifted from polished, reshared posts and perfectly captioned grid content to something looser and more human. As Phillip Kotler explains in an interview with Kellogg Insight,

“In the old days, a brand simply told you what the product is… what it does and how it’s priced” but now “a brand is the company’s promise to deliver a specific benefit that addresses a particular need of its customers”.

People care more now than they ever have about the values and moral compass of a company. Thus, creators have become an asset in which a brand can showcase their authenticity, and in turn, gain more customers. 

We have seen this strategy in action in recent years. Glossier, for example, built their brand on the influencer space, using faces for their campaigns that people could both recognise distinctively and see themselves in. Even luxury brands such as Prada and Dior are beginning to collaborate with creator heavyweights such as the Sturniolo Triplets and Madeline Argy, folding them into their story-telling, rather than treating them solely as promotional add-ons.

So, is 2026 the year of the creator? In a marketing landscape where audiences are becoming more discerning and brands are forced to reckon with trust rather than reach alone, that shift feels inevitable.

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