How Unilever's huge bet on influencers led to a creator economy gold rush

Unilever this year announced a plan to increase the number of influencers it works with by 20 times. Influencer marketing insiders say it led to a gold rush for some areas of the creator economy. The big Unilever creator marketing mandate also encouraged other brands to up their influencer game. Creators are ringing in a banner year for influencer marketing , and they might consider sending a thank-you note to Unilever CEO Fernando Fernández. In March, Fernández unveiled a new "influencer-first" strategy. He said the consumer-goods company would work with 20 times the number of influencers it had previously worked with. The owner of well-known brands such as Dove, Hellmann's, and Vaseline also said that it would spend half of its ad budget on social media, up from 30%. The result has been a galvanizing event for the influencer marketing space, according to marketing consultants and executives, talent agents, and influencer marketing insiders. "Unilever committing to expanding the influencer roster by 20X inevitably leads to increased leverage on the supply side, resulting in significant price inflation and a wave of new entrants trying to capitalize on the influencer rush," said Ruben Schreurs, chief executive of the marketing and media consultancy Ebiquity. This month, Fernández said the company was working with "close to 300,000 influencers " around the world. Unilever's high-profile "20X" target encouraged other advertisers to reassess their influencer marketing strategies, and in some cases, increase their spending as well. Elsewhere, some influencers reacted by proactively pitching to Unilever in the hope of landing projects and expanding their scopes of work. In certain markets and verticals, the dynamic has enabled top-tier influencers to increase their fees, insiders said. A survey of 200 marketers conducted by the influencer marketing agency Linqia in July found that 62% of respondents intended to increase their annual influencer budgets in 2026. US advertiser spending on creators is expected to reach $37 billion in 2025, a 26% year-over-year increase, according to a report from the Interactive Advertising Bureau released in November. While influencer marketing was already growing rapidly, industry experts said Unilever - one of the world's top advertising spenders - has been a lightning rod for the space. Where Unilever goes, other brands follow A marketing consultant at a large consulting firm said they had received "an incredible amount of inbound phone calls" from Fortune 500 brands about how they could increase their influencer marketing investment since Unilever's March announcement. While not all of those requests were linked to Unilever, the consultant said they had picked up one contract from a consumer goods company to build an influencer marketing road map, and Unilever was directly cited as the inspiration. The consultant asked for anonymity to protect their business relationships. "Where Unilever goes, others follow," said Sarah Mansfield, a marketing consultant who served as Unilever's VP of global media until 2024. "If Unilever is articulating and executing this strategy, there must be some reason why, so I understand why this is driving that type of momentum...

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