At a dinner in London in October 2025, The Business of Fashion and the creator commerce platform LTK put a number on something I see in every brief: brands invest in far more creators than a year before. LTK reported an increase of more than 275 percent, and creator marketing tops the list of where CMOs plan to put more budget (Business of Fashion).
More creators is not the hard part. The hard part is knowing what each of them does for the business. Here is how I approach it.
Start with the customer, not the creator
The most useful idea from that evening came from Space NK’s CMO, Leanne Rouse, who described thinking about creators the way the brand thinks about customers: new, retained, lapsed. I build shortlists the same way.
Before a single profile goes on a list, I ask who the campaign has to reach. A launch in Germany needs new customers who have never heard of the brand. A relaunch needs lapsed ones to look again. A loyalty push needs the people who already buy. Each group follows different creators, on different platforms, in different formats. The roster follows the customer map, not the other way round.
Give every creator a role
A portfolio that scales has tiers, and each tier has a job. LTK’s Amber Venz Box gave the example of one brand running coupon platforms for acquisition, an exclusive group of 40 high-profile creators, and gifting to tens of thousands of students, each for a different purpose.
In DACH I usually work with three roles:
- Seeding, wide and light, to find the creators who genuinely like the product. How I run it is part of influencer marketing.
- A paid round with a small, carefully cast group and one shared posting window. For Sol de Janeiro’s Intense Perfume Mists that was nine talents and 25 posts.
- Long-term partners who carry the brand over months, not weeks.
Measure each role on its own terms
Follower counts were always a weak proxy. In an algorithmic feed they say even less, because most people who see a post do not follow the creator. Venz Box argued for retail value, what a creator sells in a given period. Space NK tracks earned media value over time against brand awareness.
I report each tier against its own goal. Seeding is judged on who posted unprompted and what they said. A paid round on reach, views and earned media value. A long-term partner on how the brand’s perception and demand move over the season. One blended number hides more than it shows.
Keep the relationships
The brands at that dinner that grow fastest treat creators like long-term customers: they keep the good ones, pay them properly and bring new names in deliberately. The administration is real. Finding agents, chasing confirmations and keeping track of who received what takes time, which is why many teams stall at a few dozen creators.
That operational layer is most of what I do for brands entering DACH: the list, the contact, the contract, the brief, the follow-up. The brand keeps the decisions; I keep the roster moving.
Expect surprises
Even with good data, some content performs in ways nobody predicted. A creator who did not fit the brand’s picture of its customer converts; a strong creator’s next post goes quiet. Plan for it: leave budget to boost what works, and make sure stock can follow a post that takes off.
A portfolio built this way grows without blurring the brand, because every name on it has a reason to be there. How I put the first list together is part of talent sourcing.
Source: “How to Scale Your Creator Portfolio”, The Business of Fashion, October 2025.
