Evaluating Unilever's planned rise in influencer spend

Unilever’s new CEO recently outlined his plan for “a new model of reach and persuasion for brands,” justifying a 67% rise in the share of influencer spend by the growing role of “what others say” in an era when consumers are “by default suspicious” of what brands say. (i.e. owned content, TV, etc.)

While the company’s growing focus on social is welcome, our take is that both consumer behaviour and recent social data require a more balanced social mix, one that taps the complementary strengths of owned-done-right, all sorts of influencer relationships, and brand activities that stimulate organic earned.

Here is a rundown of dynamics and data that should factor into your social investment decisions:

1. Owned organic is more impactful than ever — for the ~10% of brands that master it: today’s algorithms reward the best and discard the rest, allowing the most creative brands to land unprecedented Owned ROIs.

   Owned content ROI is declining for most brands precisely because it is viewed “by default as suspicious,” but so is most (remunerated) influencer content. The choice brands face isn’t “owned or earned”, but how to land owned and earned content that overcomes these suspicions?

In an age when (a) comments play a prominent role in the user experience and (b) creativity is credential-building, viral owned content is brand-building and met with “oh how I love creative brands!” types of comments, while viral (remunerated) earned posts build the creator’s equity more than the brand paying them.

2. “What others say” comes in many forms of varying effectiveness: each should be treated differently (more details here).

The 2 types of Independent info are the most trusted and powerful forms of Earned: they are the bread and butter of faster growing brands, rely on creativity & strategy, not spend, e.g.:

• Organic posts emerge out of creative, well implemented on- and offline activities known to stimulate more UGC (e.g. merch, samples, community management). Click here to see examples.

• Post comments are even more convincing than UGC: they’re brand- and community-building, extend the exposure and grow brand recall. What drives 90% of the time in comments? The top 5% of owned and earned posts.

3. The elephant in the room: From our experience, C-level executives are unaware of the scale and impact of deceptive influencer practices (i.e. not declaring ongoing ties with brands they feature). These have often been documented, including by the EU Commission, which in 2024 found that only 20% of influencers they checked systematically declared commercial brand ties.

   In our analyses, these dishonest practices happen in a minority of posts, but because the appearance of organicity significantly boosts viewer trust and therefore performance, they are often* behind a majority of engagement coming from remunerated partners. (see case study here, contact us for plenty more —*the problem goes from mild to severe depending on the category and the country)

   Greater C-level awareness of these deceptive and, long-term, brand damaging practices would no doubt reshape some decisions, and re-balance the focus towards strategic skills & creativity, away from blanket spending.

4. Prioritise quality, not volume nor size: Unilever plans to grow the number of creators it works with 20-fold. More is often better, but in the absence of content mastery, is it efficient?

   Our data shows that a minority of earned posts capture a (vast) majority of earned impact: as such, best to master today’s content drivers, and work with the truly skilled creators.

   Quantity is also dangerous now that consumers resent brands that over-rely on paid influence. This timeless post (liked nearly 1m times) and this one perfectly capture consumers’ current mindset (esp. in the US).

Last, remunerate paid partners based not on size, but on results. Since 2023, we find little (Instagram) to barely any (TikTok) correlation between influencer size and Earned post engagement.

All in all, the premise of Unilever’s rethink on social is sound (what ”others say” matters more than ever) but the devil in the details calls for a more nuanced approach.

There are many forms of “what others say,” each deserving its own treatment. The current landscape rewards not spend, but creativity on earned AND owned content, as well as a tighter integration between product innovation, offline activities (sampling, merch etc.) and social activation (community management, link to commerce etc.). We find that a minority of highly savvy brands get as much (when more more) earned from truly organic sources as they do from remunerated partners.

Now that’s the type of “what others say” that consumers can rally behind.