How Unilever's huge bet on influencers led to a creator economy gold rush

• Unilever this year announced a plan to increase the number of influencers it works with by 20 times.
• Influencer marketing insiders say it led to a gold rush for some areas of the creator economy.
• The big Unilever creator marketing mandate also encouraged other brands to up their influencer game.

Creators are ringing in a banner year for influencer marketing, and they might consider sending a thank-you note to Unilever CEO Fernando Fernández.

In March, Fernández unveiled a new "influencer-first" strategy. He said the consumer-goods company would work with 20 times the number of influencers it had previously worked with. The owner of well-known brands such as Dove, Hellmann's, and Vaseline also said that it would spend half of its ad budget on social media, up from 30%.

The result has been a galvanizing event for the influencer marketing space, according to marketing consultants and executives, talent agents, and influencer marketing insiders.

"Unilever committing to expanding the influencer roster by 20X inevitably leads to increased leverage on the supply side, resulting in significant price inflation and a wave of new entrants trying to capitalize on the influencer rush," said Ruben Schreurs, chief executive of the marketing and media consultancy Ebiquity.

This month, Fernández said the company was working with "close to 300,000 influencers" around the world.

Unilever's high-profile "20X" target encouraged other advertisers to reassess their influencer marketing strategies, and in some cases, increase their spending as well. Elsewhere, some influencers reacted by proactively pitching to Unilever in the hope of landing projects and expanding their scopes of work. In certain markets and verticals, the dynamic has enabled top-tier influencers to increase their fees, insiders said.

A survey of 200 marketers conducted by the influencer marketing agency Linqia in July found that 62% of respondents intended to increase their annual influencer budgets in 2026. US advertiser spending on creators is expected to reach $37 billion in 2025, a 26% year-over-year increase, according to a report from the Interactive Advertising Bureau released in November.

While influencer marketing was already growing rapidly, industry experts said Unilever — one of the world's top advertising spenders — has been a lightning rod for the space.

Where Unilever goes, other brands follow

A marketing consultant at a large consulting firm said they had received "an incredible amount of inbound phone calls" from Fortune 500 brands about how they could increase their influencer marketing investment since Unilever's March announcement.

While not all of those requests were linked to Unilever, the consultant said they had picked up one contract from a consumer goods company to build an influencer marketing road map, and Unilever was directly cited as the inspiration. The consultant asked for anonymity to protect their business relationships.

"Where Unilever goes, others follow," said Sarah Mansfield, a marketing consultant who served as Unilever's VP of global media until 2024. "If Unilever is articulating and executing this strategy, there must be some reason why, so I understand why this is driving that type of momentum in the broader industry."

During the recent quarterly earnings season, executives at several major advertisers, including General Mills, SharkNinja, Victoria's Secret, Gap, Allbirds, and Bath & Body Works, detailed how they've increased — or plan to increase — their influencer marketing budgets

"We're going to incorporate much more community and influencers. That's a big, big change here," said José Antonio Ramos, CEO of the online fashion retailer Asos, on the company's latest earnings call about the changes it was making to its website.

On the creator side of the equation, Unilever's shift has helped to push up fees for influencers who appeal to beauty, personal care, and some food brands, said the CEO of a global marketing and communications company. Mid-tier creators in markets where Unilever already has a big market share and who "sit in the sweet spot of reach, trust, and cost" are also reaping the rewards, he said.

"In those pockets, we are seeing higher competition for the same talent, shortening lead times, and a noticeable lift in what strong creators can command," the CEO said.

The influencer market is also maturing more generally. For example, a single creator-brand partnership often includes usage rights and ads that run across multiple channels, such as Meta and TikTok, said Anders Bill, cofounder of Superfiliate, an influencer marketing platform.

Not every creator is striking Unilever gold

The Unilever gold rush isn't lifting all creators.

"From what we're seeing, that inflation is largely concentrated at the macro end of the market, where creators naturally increase their fees the moment a major global brand signals it has significant budget to deploy," said Asti Wagner, CEO of Invyted, an app that connects brands with influencers.

This tends to be the creators with followings of 100,000-plus and representation by talent managers, who are quick to react to news that a big brand like Unilever is growing its budget by upping their fees, Wagner said.

Another dynamic at play is the steep influx of creators across various platforms, including Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, and Snapchat.

Take the user-generated content, or UGC, space. In the influencer marketing world, UGC typically refers to posts and videos that creators sell to brands for use on their company accounts. A report from the influencer marketplace Collabstr found the number of UGC creators had surged by 93% year-over-year in 2024, driving down the average brand spend per influencer collaboration.

Collabstr's analysis of 15,000 influencer collaborations in 2025 found that the average spend per influencer had dropped to $202 from $214 the previous year.

"There is a saturated marketplace in terms of supply, which counteracts the increase in demand from brands such as Unilever," said Raf McDonnell, founder of creator and celebrity talent agency Talent & Brands and managing partner of the social creative agency Supernova.

Creator marketing rates are also beginning to stabilize in more mature markets such as the US and UK, said Olivia Wedderburn, head of influence and the UK-based marketing agency Born Social.

Discrepancies in fee inflation between macro and nano creators (those with fewer than 10,000 followers) aside, Ellen Topley, senior creator marketing director at the talent agency CAA's brand consulting division, said there was little doubt that Unilever's announcement earlier this year "signaled a big pivot in the industry."

"It's a strategic response to a fragmented media landscape where traditional channels are losing to algorithm-driven platforms that deliver super-targeted engagement," Topley said.