Influencer marketing’s “wild west” era is ending, and traditional advertising groups are feeling the shift

Influencer marketing may still attract clichés about chaos and improvisation, but a different picture is emerging inside the industry. What began as an experimental corner of the media landscape has matured into a structurally significant channel, and nowhere is that shift being felt more sharply than within traditional advertising groups.

This year has exposed a widening gap between legacy models and the speed at which creator-driven strategies now operate. WPP’s repeated profit warnings – and its pivot towards AI as part of a broader reset – underscore how heavily the group is contending with declining growth in core areas. Publicis, by contrast, has moved decisively to consolidate its influence in the creator economy, acquiring Influential last year and Captiv8 in May as it builds an end-to-end data, identity and influencer stack.

Independent influencer agencies now find themselves competing for the same briefs as holding-company heavyweights. Speaking on the Untalented by UNKNOWN podcast, Jamie Ray, co-founder of Buttermilk, said the shift has been impossible to ignore.

“We used to be up against our competitors in a subsection… now we’re pitching against the Ogilvys and the holding companies. We are pitching against the WPPs of this world.”

Ray described the sector’s early years as largely intuitive – a space without codified measurement frameworks, platform-native best practice or sophisticated reporting expectations. Brands treated influencer campaigns as “test and learn” exercises, often siloed from wider brand or media strategy. That looseness created opportunity and volatility in equal measure, but it also meant the discipline was consistently underestimated.

Today, however, the competitive picture has changed. As budgets have shifted, Ray said brands increasingly recognise where cultural relevance originates – and how quickly traditional agency structures can fall out of sync with shifts in consumer behaviour.

He recalled one early meeting with a global beauty brand where Buttermilk’s modest test budget sat alongside multimillion-pound retainers held by established PR, media and creative agencies. When the results were reviewed, it was the influencer work – not the traditional components – that had delivered on sentiment, reach and relevance.

“Influencer should be a speedboat,” Ray said. “A holding company is a tanker ship. If it takes five weeks for approvals, the moment has already moved on.”

The democratisation of influence

Beyond the shift in competitive dynamics, Ray argues the more fundamental transformation has been the democratisation of influence itself. TikTok’s interest-based distribution, accelerated by the pandemic, collapsed the old hierarchy built around follower count. Visibility is now tied to creativity and relevance rather than scale.

“The barrier to entry disappeared almost overnight,” he said. “That’s the democratisation of influence.”

For agencies and brands, that shift has expanded the pool of viable creators, introduced greater creative diversity, and reshaped how campaigns are designed. But Ray believes the most significant change is in how brands are beginning to use creator communities as inputs into product development and commercial strategy – not simply as channels for distribution.

Buttermilk now builds large-scale “brand fan” communities for clients, working with thousands of engaged customers before identifying smaller superfan groups with deeper emotional proximity. One beauty client used this model to test potential product concepts; a tanning-drop formula championed by superfans went on to sell out within 24 hours of launch.

Ray sees this evolution as a preview of the industry’s next phase: a movement from influence as media delivery to influence as an organising system for creativity, insight and decision-making.

“When the creator economy grows, the problems grow,” he said. “And that’s where the opportunity is.”

Listen to the full podcast interview here.