How Top Brands Scale Creator Advocacy Beyond One-Off Campaigns

In 2025, Unilever CEO Fernando Fernandez shared an ambition to have “an influencer in every postcode.”

That statement reflects the reality brands now operate in: millions of creators, billions of posts, and brand conversations happening constantly across markets and cultures.

But advocacy at that scale isn’t something brands can turn on overnight.

When we look at programs that perform well long term, one thing is clear: advocacy takes time. It requires care, consistency, and a clear understanding of where genuine brand belief already exists. Just as importantly, it requires the operational foundation to support growth without losing clarity or control.

The challenge today isn’t generating more content. It’s scaling advocacy in a way that continues to build trust.

Advocacy Is Built Through Sustained Effort—Not Peak Moments

When we analyze creator activity over time, a consistent pattern shows up across categories: the brands that perform best during peak moments are almost always the brands that were already performing well before them.

They didn’t suddenly appear during the Q4 holiday push. Instead, they sustained creator momentum throughout the year, then intensified activity during key moments. Brands without that foundation struggled to break through when looking at performance for the entire year. 

That pattern gets to the heart of what advocacy really is.

Advocacy isn’t about a single campaign or viral moment. It’s the result of consistent belief, reinforced over time by creators who genuinely align with the brand. Peaks amplify advocacy, but they don’t create it.

This is why scaling advocacy starts with a shift in mindset: from campaigns to continuity.

Advocacy Has to Be Connected to Business Objectives

Sustained creator momentum only creates value when it’s aligned with clear business objectives.

Before expanding creator programs or amplifying content, align on a few foundational questions:

• What role does advocacy play in your growth strategy?
• Are you building awareness, preference, consideration, or long-term trust?
• Which audiences matter most, and what do we want them to believe?

Brands that maintain advocacy over time don’t treat creators as interchangeable media placements. They invest in relationships that reinforce brand values and track success beyond surface-level engagement.

When strategy is clear, creators become partners in telling a consistent brand story across platforms, formats, and moments.

The Path Forward: How Brands Build Advocacy That Lasts

1. Start by listening 

Rather than building advocacy from scratch, use listening tools to find that “natural advocacy” or the creators who are mentioning your brand organically and frequently. Treat each mention as a signal, not noise. 

That’s how moments like the e.l.f. Halo Glow Gloss remix take off: creators sparked an organic trend by “remixing” glosses into oversized bottles, and e.l.f. leaned in quickly by validating and amplifying what the community was already doing. Listening with intent helps you spot these patterns early and scale what’s already resonating, instead of trying to manufacture it later.

“We’re keeping tabs on every creator that mentions us throughout the year, and we funnel them through our ecosystem from seeding to long-term paid partnerships. So when someone’s already posting about us organically, they’re automatically top of mind when we’re ready to contract new creators. Investing in creators is a mix of tactics throughout the year, paid content, events, and those small touches that build real relationships.”  - Caroline Hyche, Associate Director of Integrated Communications at Innisfree 

2. Retain and reactivate your strongest advocates

At scale, retention becomes one of the most efficient strategies to focus on because it’s typically easier and more cost-effective to re-engage creators who already know and like your brand than to constantly start from scratch.

A practical benchmark is to aim to retain ~40% of your “best” creators from peak season. Remember “best” isn’t just top performers, but also your strongest advocates (look at frequency of mentions and audience alignment, not just views).

Then build simple reactivation plays beyond payment like early access to products or invites to events, plus lightweight relationship signals (reposting, commenting, and showing support).

3. Maintain momentum between peaks

One of the biggest differences between brands that sustain advocacy and those that spike and fade is what happens between tentpole moments. The programs that perform best don’t go quiet but maintain a steady level of creator activity year-round.

“Investing in creators means a lot of different tactics throughout the year. It can be paying creators for content. It can be inviting them to events. It can be sending them presents on their birthdays or big life moments. There's a lot of different ways you can truly invest in influencers and creators.” - Caroline Hyche, Associate Director of Integrated Communications at Innisfree 

That consistency doesn’t require large, constant spend. It often shows up through always-on tactics like ongoing gifting, continuous UGC creation, and lightweight activations that keep creators engaged. When those foundations are in place, peak moments become easier to scale because brands are building on existing relationships and momentum, not trying to create it from scratch.

4. Measure signals that reflect real advocacy

As creator programs scale, measurement has to evolve. The brands we see doing this well look at signals that compound over time, such as:

• Frequency of organic mentions
• Quality and consistency of creator advocacy
• Retention over time

“Retention is a critical metric for us. It tells us how many creators we are truly in relationship with over time, not just how many we activated once. The most powerful partnerships are with creators who already talk about the brand organically before and after a paid moment. We believe deeply in nurturing the community even when you do not see immediate ROI. The value often shows up later.” - Tiffani D. Carter, Chief Marketing Officer at Pattern Beauty

These signals provide a clearer view of where advocacy is strengthening and where it needs support.

The Infrastructure Required to Scale Advocacy Well

As creator programs grow across teams, regions, and creators, execution becomes more complex. It becomes difficult to answer basic questions like: Who are our real advocates? Where should we invest next? And what’s actually working over time? 

This is why infrastructure is critical. Brands looking to scale advocacy responsibly need:

• Centralized visibility into creator relationships, with a reliable way to capture creator mentions across platforms, markets, and formats.
• Lifecycle tracking to understand who is new, retained, or re-engaged
• Consistent measurement across organic and paid activity
• Clear workflows and governance so activations are tracked and auditable
• The ability to operate at volume without relying on spreadsheets and inboxes

Traackr was built to support exactly this reality. It gives brands a centralized view of creator activity across platforms and makes it possible to identify real advocates, understand how relationships evolve, and scale programs with confidence rather than guesswork.

When advocacy is treated as a system—supported by the right data and workflows—it stops being a "soft" brand play and becomes a strategic advantage you can scale with confidence.