The brand-building case for creators in B2B

The marketing industry has long treated creators and influencers as a short-term sales tool. New research suggests we’ve had it fundamentally wrong, and the implications for B2B marketers are significant.

Two converging bodies of evidence are reshaping how we should think about creator-led content in the media mix. The first comes from Andrew Tindall, Chief Growth Officer at System1 Group, whose recent piece in The Drum makes a compelling case that creators are digital’s first true brand-building channel, backed by hard econometric data rather than the usual “authenticity” narrative. The second came directly to our CMA B2B Council in February, where System1’s Josh Fruttiger and Alex Carantza presented findings from a large-scale TikTok study that adds critical texture to what this means in practice, particularly for B2B audiences.

The research in brief

The IPA, in partnership with WPP, analyzed 220 econometric studies covering £133 million in creator spend across 28 markets, 36 categories, and 144 brands. The headline finding: over a two-year horizon, creators deliver the highest total ROI of any media channel. Not paid social.

Not display. Creators.

Short-term, they perform on par with TV. Long-term, they outperform everything.

System1’s own study, presented at our Council session, reinforces this. Analyzing 350 TikTok brand and conversion lift studies across eight markets, testing nearly 1,000 ads with close to 100,000 users, the research examined what creative features drive brand and business outcomes.

The key tension they explored: showmanship versus salesmanship.

Showmanship, ads built around characters, storytelling, humour, and something unexpected, drives strong brand lift. Entertaining ads built brand awareness, improved brand image, and generated more positive emotion and attention. And here’s the part that surprises most people: the most entertaining ads also drove a 50 per cent increase in conversion lift. You don’t have to choose between building brand and driving action.

Salesmanship, ads focused on rational product features, heavy calls to action, and direct response mechanics, drove an 88 per cent increase in conversion lift. But they came at a cost: reduced brand recall, lower awareness, and weaker brand image over time.

The takeaway is not to abandon performance advertising. It’s to recognize that layering in elements of entertainment makes your performance campaigns more effective, not less.

The branding problem nobody talks about

Here’s where it gets complicated for brands activating creators. Across social platforms, the average two-second brand recognition score sits around 40 per cent. That means 60 per cent of people watching your ads are not connecting the content to your brand.

Creator-led ads capture roughly 40 per cent more attention than traditional ads. But they also have half the early brand recognition. You’re winning attention and losing attribution.

The fix is not slapping a logo in the first two seconds. System1’s data shows that logo overlays reduce attention, because consumers have been conditioned to scroll past anything that signals “this is an ad.” What works instead is what Josh and the System1 team call distinctive entertainment: integrating your brand assets into the content itself so that the branding becomes the hook, not an afterthought.

Logo in context, product integrated into a recipe or a scene, sonic branding, a recognizable brand character - these approaches maintain attention while building recognition. The sweet spot System1 found: three to four distinctive brand assets in the first two seconds, delivered in ways that feel native to the platform.

Why does this matter so much in B2B? Because most B2B buying cycles are long, complex, and involve multiple stakeholders. By the time a buying committee enters an active evaluation phase, much of the shortlisting has already been shaped by memory, familiarity, and perceived credibility. Creator-led entertainment, when properly branded, builds those memory structures early. It creates mental availability before intent is visible in your CRM or your analytics dashboard. In complex sales environments, that early emotional and cognitive imprint is not a luxury. It is a competitive advantage.

What this means for B2B marketers

This is where the conversation at our Council session got particularly relevant. B2B marketers face some unique challenges in applying this thinking.

Your “creators” often aren’t creators at all. In B2B, the influencers are frequently healthcare professionals, industry analysts, subject matter experts or authors. They haven’t built an audience by making content; they’ve built credibility by knowing things. Josh’s advice here was direct: treat them as hired devices and be intentional about brand integration. Left to their own devices, these professionals will build their own brand, not yours.

Consistency matters even more in this context. When brands work with the same individual over time, something important happens: the association shifts from the person to the brand. The Dunkin’ and Ben Affleck example Josh cited illustrates it well. After enough exposures, people stop remembering “the Ben Affleck ad” and start remembering the Dunkin’ ad. That’s the goal.

B2B advertising has an emotional neutrality problem. System1’s research shows that roughly half of B2B ads leave viewers feeling nothing at all. Emotional neutrality is not safe. It’s forgettable. The LinkedIn ad Josh shared during the session, targeting forklifts at befuddled financiers, drove a measurable shift from neutrality to surprise and happiness as the joke landed. That emotional movement is what creates memory. And memory is what drives consideration when the buying moment arrives.

B2B buyers are still people. They watch TV. They scroll TikTok. They respond to humour. ServiceNow’s Idris Elba campaign and IBM’s self-aware TikTok content are proof that you can be a serious enterprise brand and still earn attention through entertainment.

The variance in creator-led content quality is a real risk. Josh was candid about this. Creator ads are more likely to be outstanding or terrible, with fewer landing in the middle. That variance is largely a creative quality problem, and creative quality is something marketers can control. The answer is not to hand the brief to the creator and walk away. It’s to bring your brand strategy and creative platform to the table first, then let the creator adapt it for their channel and audience.

As Andrew Tindall puts it in his piece, “We’ve been giving them too much say in things.” Marketers need to lead.

The practical takeaway

Whether you’re running B2B campaigns on LinkedIn, investing in short-form social, or exploring creator partnerships for the first time, a few things are now clear:

• Creators are a brand-building channel, not just a conversion tactic. Measure them over a longer window.
• Entertaining your audience and selling to them are not mutually exclusive.
• Make your brand distinctively recognizable from the first two seconds, but do it through creative integration, not logo overlays.
• In B2B, emotional neutrality is your biggest creative risk. Humour, surprise and storytelling are underleveraged tools.
• When working with non-creator influencers like industry experts or professionals, brief them like you would any channel. Own the strategy; let them own the execution.

The research is increasingly pointing in one direction. Creators, when properly briefed and brand-integrated, are among the most powerful tools available to build lasting brand equity. The brands that figure this out first will have a meaningful advantage.

Thank you to Josh Fruttiger and Alex Carantza from System1 for bringing this research to our CMA B2B Council, and to Andrew Tindall for his insightful piece in The Drum.

Thank you as well to Jill Knaggs for helping arrange the discussion, to Patrick Waller and the LCBO for hosting our hybrid Council session, and to members of the CMA Brand Council for joining the conversation.

You can find the original article here (note: article may be behind a paywall), and access The Long and Short (form) of it research here.

Author:
Marc Cooper, Partner and President, Junction59