10 Takeouts from “Desperately Seeking Substance”

(1/10) The year of Intentional Content Consumption. 

Ajalin Williamson, Strategy Director at Goat, set the scene for the morning with an exploration of some of the key cultural mood shifts from 2025: “Everywhere we look, there are consumer behaviors that signal a determined shift from mindless scrolling to considered “intentional consumption”.” 

Gen Z are sharing “things they did instead of doom-scrolling” or creating “personal curriculums” to encourage learning and improvement. There’s the return of the written word with users flocking to platforms like Substack and old-school blogs, whilst podcast and YouTube deep dives seem to be getting longer than ever.

Taylor Swift’s advice on the New Heights podcast to “treat your energy like it’s a luxury item that not everyone can afford” went viral because it spoke to this shift in attitude. People are thinking of their attention online as valuable, and they won’t give it away as easily.

In 2026, brands need to really and truly understand this. Stop contributing to the noise with meaningless landfill content. Prioritise content that tells a story and leaves people feeling “nourished”.

Read more on this on Goat’s Substack.

(2/10) Creator competence and credibility is becoming more important

Our first panel of the morning asked “Is the era of relatability over?”. Creator marketing throughout the 2010s and early 2020s embodied relatability and accessibility, but now that feeds have become flooded with this, are people now once more looking for more credible voices of authority? Think bloggers, substack-ers, or creators with real knowledge about a niche topic like The Swiftologist (pop music) or  Wisdom Kaye (fashion creator).

Tyson Black, Account Director at Goat, claimed that “competence” is becoming more important. The saturation of platforms and the democratization of content creation has been hugely exciting, but now people are once more wanting to see creators that have more to their content than just following trends and being relatable. Jago Sherman, Head of Strategy at Goat, also suggested that with the explosion of AI, we may see a pendulum swing back to higher quality video content.

Kyra Green, Creator and Musician, agreed that competence is key but argued from her experience that audiences still want to see her raw unfiltered self. They like when she’s open about failures or personal struggles as it helps them to connect. 

Ultimately, as Yujin Lee, Global Strategy Director at WPP Media, explained there needs to be a balance of aspiration and attainability. People want to look up to the creators they follow whether that’s for their humor, their personality, their style, their education, or their skill. But at the same time, a level of relatability is important especially in recommendations of what to purchase.

(3/10) Short-form isn’t going anywhere. But we can be more creative with it.

Ok, we’ve sung the praises of long form content, but it’s important to note that short form video isn’t going anywhere! As Andres Diaz, Social Video Lead at YouTube, pointed out, brands and creators are driving insane reach with YouTube Shorts and they’re also highly effective at driving people to your longer form video too.

As Wisdom Kaye, Creator and Model, explained in our “Creating Content with Substance” panel, he finds that short-form TikToks, IG Reels and YouTube Shorts are still hugely popular with his audience, but the level of creativity and quality going into them is more important than ever. Take this TikTok as an example. The first comment says “It feels wrong to be watching this without paying”. In a sea of unfiltered, trend-jumping TikToks and AI, this content stands out and people respect the craft. 

(4/10) Make creator personas

Here’s one that may seem obvious but you’d be surprised how many people don’t adopt this approach. When it comes to planning your creator marketing strategy, it helps to create detailed personas of the types of audiences you want to reach and the types of creators that they might follow.

Alex Casale, VP of Marketing at WhistlePig Whiskey (and a Goat US client) shared how they’ve approached this. WhistlePig is a renowned premium whiskey brand whose rye is bold, luxurious and rebellious. Their challenge though? People weren’t always sure how and when to drink it. 

To tackle this, they’ve adopted a strategic approach to influencer marketing, narrowing the creators they follow into three categories; mixologists, enthusiasts (whiskey nerds), and everyday customers (lifestyle creators that drink whiskey). The mixologists inspire people around how to drink the product. The enthusiasts educate people about whiskeys and WhistlePig’s story. And the lifestyle creators entertain and show when to drink WhistlePig in daily life.

(5/10) Get creators to genuinely understand your brand’s story

The more that you can communicate the story you want your brand to tell to the creators you partner with, the more they’ll be able to communicate it with their audience.

Now, this doesn’t need to mean a 10 page briefing document and a list of 100 do’s and dont’s. No, don’t waste time scripting creators and spend more time on getting them to really understand and feel passionate about your brand and products. 

WhistlePig take creators for tasting experiences at the WhistlePig Whiskey Farm so they can really understand the production process and flavor profiles. Dell have creators come with them to major conferences like Dell Technologies World and educate them about the different products and how they could help them in their line of content creation. And Imani Moss, Influencer Marketing Lead at Sheamoisture, explained how when she was at Topicals, they hosted an influencer trip to Ghana. 12 BIPOC creators were invited to learn about the brand, create content and participate in a culture exchange day. They even created a viral moment after Imani was tasked with “taking skincare out the bathroom” and the creators all wore eye masks to the club!

Seeing long term ambassadors in particular as a part of your marketing team and making them feel valued is key to meaningful creator partnerships!

(6/10) Leave space for risk-taking

Some of the best creator-led campaigns we’ve seen over the past year have been unexpected and surprising. They stop the scroll and cut through the sea of the same because you wouldn’t have expected that brand to partner up with that creator.

Goat’s Social Content Strategists, Piet Dayney and Clara Sulek, gave the example of Bus Aunty Bemi and Burberry. On paper this partnership doesn’t make sense. Bemi isn’t a fashion influencer and she doesn’t talk about luxury clothes; her whole content style is filming herself watching big red London buses go by. 

But the key is that she’s become a bit of a London icon on TikTok. Burberry is known for its British heritage and its celebration of British history, fashion and people. At Goat, we call this “relevant irrelevance”. It’s taking something seemingly irrelevant but when you look at it from a different perspective, the relevance is still there.

Abby Short, Senior Digital Marketing Manager at Discover, gave the example of their work with Winnie the Wiener. Who would have thought that dog and pet influencers would be so impactful in driving genuine brand awareness, consideration and conversions for a financial services brand. But it’s their best performing creator! We recommend always leaving 15% space for testing, experimentation, and just trying creators completely out of the box!  

(7/10) Don’t strive for authenticity and end up with monotony 

Following on from point 6, let’s unpack the word that was said a total of 32 times over the course of the morning.

Authenticity.

Yes, you’re probably just as tired of it as we are!

It’s a bit of a buzzword in influencer marketing and let’s be honest, the meaning can get muddled. For example, is Paloma Diamond “authentic” even though she’s a fictional TikTok character? Is a creator that’s focused on creating a persona and content around a certain lifestyle authentic even if it isn’t 100% true? And should brands only partner with creators that 100% feel “authentic” to them?

Don’t let “being authentic” mean that you only ever work with the same influencers and creators in your brand’s niche, or that you only make a certain type of content. It’s hard to define what is really “authentic” as – as we heard at the event – everyone has a different way of viewing it! Instead we should be asking ourselves, does this creator speak to a segment of my audience? Do they feel relevant, even if it’s not in an obvious way? And does the content educate, entertain or inspire? 

(8/10) Influencer content deserves a longer life

More budget is going into creator marketing and creator-led content, but now it’s about making that content work harder. 

Alisa Lipper, Head of Paid Social and Influencer at Dell (and Goat global Client), explained how they think about influencer content with a distribution-first mindset. How can the content be extended across paid, digital, OOH, retail, point-of-sale, and everywhere audiences spend their time? This needs to be front of mind and we need to stop thinking about creators and influencer marketing as just being within the walls of social.

For this reason, it’s even more important for social and influencer teams and agencies to be integrated with other channels. For too long, they have operated in silo. 2026 is going to be the year where we really see it becoming an integral part to the entire media plan, as well as a fundamental element within search and ecommerce. 

(9/10) From NIL to education influencers, think about the cultural crossovers and truly invest

Allie Hartman, Culture Marketing Lead at Keurig Dr Pepper, explained how the brand has consistently shown up in college football, including partnering with athlete influencers. This really helps to cultivate a genuine connection between Dr Pepper and campus sport life. 

Pearson, on the other hand, is one of the biggest legacy media and education technology brands in the world and yet, as Sophie Naufal, Influencer Marketing Lead, explained “everyone only knows it for textbooks”. They’re looking at partnering with big creators like Mr Beast who has used his fortune and starpower to build schools in Africa and provide free lunches for underprivileged students. 

To make meaningful creator marketing strategies, think about the stories your brand wants to tell and who can tell those stories in human ways.

(10/10) Success is more than clicks or cost metrics.

The IPA’s research into influencer effectiveness has found that influencer marketing delivers short term ROI on par with all other media channels AND has the highest long-term multiplier. We know that it works.

But now, we’re looking at wider metrics than just impressions, clicks and CPMs. Instead, we should focus on community, shares, comments, earned media, brand uplift; essentially the signals that people have truly engaged with this and found it meaningful.

Listen to our Overherd on Social episode with WPP Media’s Dominic Charles for a deepr dive into the IPA’s research.