Why Brands Are Choosing Creators Over Influencers
From a $2M sales day at Favorite Daughter to Bob's Discount Furniture's 50% jump in organic reach, creator-led content is outperforming influencer deals.
The creator economy is no longer an experiment. At Shoptalk Fall in Nashville, executives from Favorite Daughter, SharkNinja and Bob’s Discount Furniture shared numbers that explain why creator budgets are climbing—and why the definition of “influencer” is changing.
Data from CreatorIQ’s seventh annual State of Creator Marketing report backs the shift: nearly half of brands now earn 3x or greater ROI from creators, and creator budgets have risen 33% year over year. Separate eMarketer projections put U.S. influencer marketing spend at $13.7 billion by 2027.
What Favorite Daughter learned about trust
The women’s clothing brand began investing officially in creators ahead of its National Daughters Day sale on September 25. That day, 25 creators went live first thing in the morning, and the brand ran fall hauls with creators pushing new denim in the weeks before.
The result: $2 million in sales, up 100% from last year. One Dallas mom with 60,000 followers, Sara Foster said, tends to sell more product than an A-list celebrity. The brand also turned its social-media head, Laura Galvan, into a public face who posts styling videos several times a week.
Foster’s read on the shift is blunt: “The consumer has sniffed out inauthenticity and they don’t want it anymore.”
How SharkNinja turns creators into a content engine
SharkNinja now says creators produce 70% of its content. Michelle Crossan-Matos, chief brand and experience officer, calls them the company’s “magic sauce.” The appliance maker plans creator support for each of its 25 annual product launches, mapping which creator tier fits each product story.
The company also runs a daily writers’ room that builds “hook books” for creators, because, as Crossan-Matos puts it, “you can’t be just doing a writers’ room once a week” in a viral social environment. Last year, Ninja Creami content alone generated 1 billion impressions.
Creators versus influencers, in one line
Bob’s Discount Furniture’s CMO Stephen Nesle offered perhaps the cleanest framing: “Influencers peddle their opinions. Creators create something to shape their POV.” Season one of its shoppable series “Til Decor Do Us Part” pulled 200 million views and $9 million in sales with everyday couples. For season two, Bob’s handed the keys to creators with built-in audiences.
Nesle admitted the risk: “It scared the hell out of me to hand over the keys of the brand to creators.” But with guardrails in place, early season-two organic reach and engagement is 50% higher than season one at the same point last year. The four creator couples carry a combined reach of about 12 million people.
What this means for your next campaign
The pattern is not follower count; it is perceived closeness. A creator with a smaller, engaged audience often behaves like a trusted friend making a recommendation. That is exactly the dynamic brands pay for when reach alone stops converting.
A few moves that show up across all three brands:
- Recruit genuine fans first. Favorite Daughter prioritises culture fit and authentic love of the brand over reach.
- Match creator type to product story. SharkNinja plans content by launch and creator tier, not with a one-size-fits-all influencer list.
- Give guardrails, then step back. Bob’s success came from being “a guest at their table,” as Nesle put it—not scripting the whole event.
Traditional influencers aren’t disappearing; Bob’s still sees them as a lever for brand awareness. But the strongest results now come when creators and influencers work in combination—one builds familiarity, the other borrows it.
Source: Digiday
