For all the likely changes that AI will bring to marketing and brand-consumer relationships, one thing will always remain true — effective creator marketing relies on authentic human relationships built over time between creators and their followers.
The more pervasive AI-generated synthetic media and AI influencers get, the more important the human element becomes. CreatorIQ is betting on 'the human' being an integral part of creator marketing for the foreseeable future. This ‘humanness’ will prove critical to the staying power of creators, as consumers increasingly reward authentic connections over synthetic content. In fact, early CreatorIQ research on AI influencers already shows that human creators still drive deeper engagement.
So the question becomes, how can we use AI to make creator marketing more human? In other words, how can we use AI to scale successful creator marketing?
Our goal is to free marketers from routine tasks, allowing them to focus on what truly matters—creativity and strategic impact. We do this by putting the force of our innovation behind the transformation of creator marketers’ most essential work:
- Discovery: Make creator discovery and selection increasingly quick, safe, and effective
- Campaign Management: Spend less time on the mundane and manual and more time on refining the strategic details
- Reporting: Predictive insights that anticipate trends and optimal strategies
Unlocking the power of AI to improve these fundamentals doesn’t just save marketers time. It makes each task more effective as well, by optimizing the core functions of marketing programs. After all, discovery is expensive, campaign management is hard, and reporting is largely retrospective. Applying the power of AI to these tasks leaves marketers with both more time and more budget to apply to more strategy elements that require a human touch.
We presented our AI product vision at CreatorIQ Connect Europe this May. Check it out here to see what I describe below in action.
Discovery
Today, CreatorIQ’s discovery engine is based on semantic quick search, creator recommendations, and the ability to surface brand mentions. Soon, that will expand to content-first discovery capabilities that refine search queries by content aesthetics, as well as brand safety filters powered by natural language processing. Ultimately, this becomes an always-on creator recommendation engine that functions at every stage of the funnel, for any outcome.
For example, take the simple search query: ‘van lifers in the US.’ Today you can do this without complex Boolean AND/OR statements or long keyword strings or negative modifiers. You should not have to learn how to search well. Just search the way you talk… like a search engine for creators. Semantic search gets the gist of what you’re looking for, and returns highly relevant results.
Content-first Discovery is next. The first thing most marketers do when presented with discovery search results is to check the content of the creators presented. So why not bring the content to the search? Content-first Discovery will let marketers refine their search by content aesthetics, refining results by surfacing creators that match the company’s vibe.
Campaign Management
Today, we offer creator recommendations based on content and follower attribute similarities. Tomorrow, that evolves to structured campaign briefs and matching briefs to existing content. Eventually, this will result in better campaign briefs, built faster, and with greater insights using a creator’s existing content as examples.
The campaign brief is a powerful and robust tool that AI can help amplify to all components of the management process. Elements like campaign details, creative requirements, and tips that are shared by brands or agencies with their creator talent can be easily shared with the creators that are participating in the campaign, with AI handling that workload.
With a robust brief in hand, our AI-powered platform can first learn the nuances of the campaign’s goals, and then review the content of prospective creators to match those with examples that match the creative goals of the brief.
This will allow our system to personalize creator-facing content in a way not previously possible. For example, imagine if campaign recruitment emails were able to embed examples of content that matched the goals of the campaign.
Reporting and Measurement
Today we’re using AI to develop performance forecasting and modeling/measurement of brand mentions. Soon, that will provide the ability to deliver creator recommendations based on performance forecasts. This ultimately will result in predictive measurement applicable at the planning stage (not just the post-campaign review).
This isn’t an AI product roadmap. It’s an overarching strategy. We don’t have an AI roadmap — we have one product roadmap where AI is fully integrated into every aspect of the platform.
But AI capabilities are just the start. As we harness the power of AI across our platform, we are committed to thoughtful innovation that augments—but does not replace—human connection.
We’ll do this by continuing to anchor all that we do in these three core principles:
- Authenticity: We look for innovative ways to support, strengthen, and optimize relationships — but we will never eliminate real humans from that equation. Creator marketing relies on human relationships built over time. The most successful creator marketing endeavors are built on genuine creator authenticity, audience connection, and community.
- Security: Creator data is people data. We understand that with AI comes many valid concerns about data privacy. In an era where data privacy is paramount, it’s any software provider’s duty to respect and secure personal data, and it’s one that we take seriously. And when it comes to machine learning, we must consider embedded biases.
- Value: Our AI solutions focus on maximizing the returns on investment, helping marketers identify the most effective strategies and relationships to further marketing goals. Results matter. As AI technology matures, we'll prioritize innovation that maximizes the value of connections and investments.
All this means that CreatorIQ will not build solutions for wholly AI influencers or create fully automated content without human inputs. While we recognize there is likely a lot of money to be made from “AI influencers” in the short term, we think that overall the industry will always self-correct for creator/consumer authenticity.
What we will build are '70% automation' solutions that make our customers’ everyday work on our platform more meaningful. We will minimize repetitive work, like scouring content to validate discovery results or overcoming writer’s block for campaign briefs.
After all, AI is far better applied to the mundane tasks of marketing, to free up marketers’ time and energy to be more creative, strategic, and … human.