Creator marketing is starting to look less like traditional advertising with influencers added at the end.
That is one of the clearest ideas running through the 50th episode of The Irish Marketing Podcast, which turns its attention to the growth of the creator economy and the uncomfortable question facing brands: how much control are they actually willing to give creators?
The episode brings together voices from THINKHOUSE, Orchard Thieves and the creator community to discuss what happens when brands stop treating creators as distribution channels and start treating them more like creative partners.
The timing makes sense. Creator marketing in Ireland is moving further into mainstream brand strategy, with IAB Ireland also putting creator-first marketing, regulation and commercial impact on the agenda for its industry events.
Orchard Thieves Is Building a Creator Community, Not Just Booking Influencers
A big part of the conversation centers on Orchard Thieves’ “Fox Pack”, developed with youth marketing agency THINKHOUSE.
The idea is deliberately different from the familiar campaign model.
Rather than finding a creator, approving a few posts and moving on, the Fox Pack is being positioned as a community of emerging Gen Z creators who can develop an ongoing relationship with the brand.
That distinction matters.
Short influencer campaigns can generate reach, but they do not always produce much of a relationship between the creator and the company paying them. A creator gets a brief. Content goes live. Performance numbers arrive. Everyone moves to the next campaign.
The Fox Pack model pushes in another direction: keep creators closer to the brand and give them more influence over how that brand appears in culture.
IAB Ireland has also highlighted the Orchard Thieves Fox Pack as an example of building a creator-first mindset, with THINKHOUSE and Heineken Ireland representatives discussing the project in the context of effective creator marketing.
Giving Creators Control Can Get Uncomfortable
There is a catch.
Brands have to give something up.
David Byrne of THINKHOUSE and Anna Walsh of Orchard Thieves discuss why companies need to become more comfortable allowing creators to make content in their own style rather than squeezing every video into a conventional advertising template.
That can produce moments no traditional brand team would necessarily write into a brief.
One example discussed in the podcast involved Fox Pack creators drinking Orchard Thieves through straws.
It is a small detail. It also gets at the bigger issue.
Creator culture does not always behave like advertising culture.
If every unusual idea is removed during brand approval, the creator may still be visible in the final post, but much of the personality that made the brand want to work with them in the first place can disappear.
Gen Z Can Spot an Ad Very Quickly
Creator Lara Way takes the argument further.
Highly polished content is not automatically better content, particularly when the audience is younger.
Gen Z users have spent years scrolling through TikTok, Instagram Reels, YouTube Shorts and countless sponsored posts. They have become remarkably familiar with the visual language of advertising.
Perfect lighting. Perfect framing. Perfect product placement. Perfectly rehearsed enthusiasm.
Sometimes all that perfection is the problem.
Way argues that younger audiences are quick to recognize content that feels manufactured or excessively commercial. Content that is slightly rougher, stranger or more obviously shaped by the creator can feel considerably more believable.
The creator’s style becomes part of the value.
Not something the brand needs to edit out.
The Creator Brief Is Starting to Change
For marketers, this changes what a good creator brief should accomplish.
A conventional advertising brief often tries to eliminate uncertainty. There are approved claims, visual guidelines, mandatory messages, carefully chosen wording and plenty of things that cannot be said.
Creator work needs some of those guardrails too, particularly around disclosure, accuracy and brand safety.
But controlling everything is different from providing guardrails.
The more tightly a company dictates the finished content, the easier it becomes to produce something that technically includes a creator but feels exactly like an ordinary advertisement.
And audiences notice.
That is why the more interesting creator strategies are increasingly built around choosing the right person first, then allowing that person enough space to create something recognizable as their own.
Creators Are Becoming Part of Brand Strategy Earlier
There is another change hiding underneath all of this.
Creators are moving closer to the beginning of the marketing process.
For years, creators often entered after the campaign concept was already complete. The agency developed the idea. The brand approved it. Production happened.
Then someone asked which influencers could promote it.
That order is shifting.
Creator insight can now influence the concept itself, particularly when brands are trying to understand fast-moving youth culture, emerging platforms or online communities that traditional research may struggle to capture quickly.
Creators know which formats feel tired.
They know which jokes are already dead.
They know when brand language sounds like a marketing department trying very hard to sound young.
That information can be valuable long before anybody presses record.
Creator Marketing Is Becoming a Bigger Irish Industry Conversation
The podcast episode also lands at a moment when creator marketing is receiving more structured attention across Ireland’s advertising industry.
IAB Ireland’s creator marketing programming has brought brands, agencies, platforms and creators together to discuss commercial effectiveness, platform changes, advertising standards, transparency and disclosure.
That suggests the creator economy has reached a different stage.
The conversation is no longer simply about whether influencer marketing works.
The harder questions are now about how it should work.
- Who owns the creative idea?
- How much freedom should creators receive?
- How should commercial relationships be disclosed?
Can a creator influence the wider brand, rather than simply deliver sponsored content?
Those are much more mature questions.
The Best Creator Content May Not Look Like Advertising
Brands have spent decades perfecting advertising.
Creator marketing occasionally asks them to forget some of what they learned.
Not all of it.
Brands still need strategy. They need consistency. Legal requirements do not disappear because somebody is filming on an iPhone.
But audiences increasingly reward content that does not feel like it emerged from six approval meetings.
That creates a strange challenge.
Brands are paying creators because they want authenticity, personality and cultural relevance.
Then the instinct can be to control precisely those things.
The 50th episode of The Irish Marketing Podcast captures that tension well.
Creator marketing works differently when the creator is allowed to actually create.
And for brands chasing Gen Z attention, getting comfortable with that loss of control may become part of the job.
About The Irish Marketing Podcast
The Irish Marketing Podcast is produced by IMJ/Adworld.ie together with Tinpot Productions and hosted by Daryl Moorhouse.
Adworld.ie describes itself as the online portal of Irish Marketing Journal, covering Ireland’s marketing, advertising and media industries. Previous episodes have featured conversations with agency leaders, creatives and marketers from across the Irish advertising industry.
Sources
- The Irish Marketing Podcast — Spotify
Listen to the episode - Adworld.ie / Irish Marketing Journal
Visit Adworld.ie - IAB Ireland — Creator Marketing Summit
View the event and creator marketing programme - IAB Ireland — Orchard Thieves Fox Pack: Building a Creator-First Mindset
Visit IAB Ireland
