The influence market is experiencing an identity crisis. It’s not a volume crisis. The money keeps flowing, the creators multiply and the campaigns get bigger and bigger. It’s a crisis of meaning. We are measuring success by volume, not stickiness. And this strategic myopia has been costing brands millions in equity.
Traditional influencer marketing has drowned in vanity metrics. Likes, comments and impressions are the new bread and circuses of the market. These indicators inflate reports, justify budgets and give a false sense of success.
Buy reach × build desire.
Traditional logic treats the influencer as a vehicle. You pay for reach, measure clicks and repeat the formula until you get tired. The market, in its rush for scale, has built a fragile structure that is easy to dismantle when methodology and sustainable results are required.
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This fragility exposes a market where most investment is lost in the noise. In many cases, 80% to 90% of the comments on a sponsored post talk about the influencer [“linda”, “te amo”] and not the brand or product. The problem is not the creator, but the system that surrounds him. Reports based on screen prints. Superficial analyzes that boil down to counting “positives” and “negatives”, with an excess of “neutrals” without real meaning. Conflicts of interest in digital marketing agencies that prioritize profit and end up sacrificing the brand’s strategy.
Influencer Branding
The professionalization of the sector is not a trend, it is a necessity for survival. Brands like Nike and Mars are internalizing their influence operations, treating creators as a strategic channel. A great benefit of this for brands is the control of performance linked to strategy.
It is in this context that influencer branding emerges, a brand-oriented section of influencer marketing, focusing on brand value, cultural consistency and content as an asset. The priority is not immediate CPM (Cost Per Thousand) or CAC (Customer Acquisition Cost), but rather building associations, credibility, consideration and preference. The brand needs to access communities with legitimacy and the content generated must become an asset and strategy for generating value.
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What the market calls “engagement” can be read as brand relevance. According to Timelens, when analyzing the adherence rate, only 3% to 5% of comments address the brand’s central message. If your budget is generating 95% noise, you are not doing influencer marketing. You are financing the popularity of others.
Brand safety and the science of “fit”
Professionalization also brought risk governance. From background checks to crisis protocols, the topic has become a priority for big brands. In high-growth formats, the brand has less control, but needs clear parameters without killing authenticity. In a polarized environment, the absence of governance and operational checklists can lead to billion-dollar losses, as shown in 2023 by the Bud Light case of AB InBev, in the United States.
The main challenge continues to be selecting the ideal creator, and the market still confuses volume with relevance. The key to influencer branding is adherence — the famous “fit”. The “Understanding influencer marketing” study shows that results improve when there is adherence between influencer, product and audience. High adherence increases desire for the brand, increases purchase intention and recommendation. “Fit” goes beyond the product category: it measures aesthetics, repertoire, values, tone and, mainly, the type of relationship the creator has with their audience.
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End of the era of the generic creator and inflated engagement.
Influencer branding requires marketing leadership to exchange the likes spreadsheet for methodological rigor. Mixing everything into a single ROAS is analytical laziness. It’s more work than adding likes, but it does something more difficult and valuable: it transforms trust into recurring preference and margin. The future is not about having more creators, but about having the right creators, with the right message, generating the adherence that really builds value.
Dominating territories is not about occupying a map, it is about becoming a cultural and language reference. Influencer branding works by search, sales and conversation share at the same time. The result may not be viral, but every time the topic emerges, your brand arrives first, speaks better and sells more.
