Must Be Nice: The Creator Freebie Backlash
It's the latest chapter in 2025’s reckoning with creators and influencers.
What’s Going On?
“How many influencers have been invited to F1 and Wimbledon this weekend?”
Summer means events – and resentment. More fans are questioning why brands reward the already privileged while regular people are priced out of the culture they helped build.
As always, there’s a counterview. Motorsports creator Antonia Rankin defends influencers as part of the modern marketing machine. And Princess of Reinvention says that if you want the perks, you should just become an influencer. (What, like it’s hard?)
What’s Driving It?
There’s plenty of data confirming that creators work. As per Born Social’s post-Cannes report The Creator Gap (informed by research from WARC, Kantar, and ilk):
Well-branded creator ads drive 2.3x higher brand awareness lift
But 45% of creator spend on Meta is wasted – on content that’s unbranded and unwatched
“In the rush for authenticity, the basics of brand building are being left at the door.”
And it’s part of a bigger recalibration in how we see creators (and reckoning with what creators owe us), which I’ve written about over the last months:
More people are calling out creators when their values feel misaligned
The quasi-worship of rich influencers is increasingly being read as dystopia, not #goals
Lifestyle content that ignores crisis now feels tone-deaf, not neutral (silence is also seen as a statement)
Basically: the influencer economy feels increasingly out of step with the cultural mood.
What Does It Mean?
The latest creator backlash isn’t (purely) driven by envy – it shows that when a partnership doesn’t feel earned, audiences tune out.
Final Takeaway
Creators need to deliver relevance and resonance, not just reach. So if a creator’s presence doesn’t clearly add value (or spark something culturally) it won’t work for your brand or your audience.