Creator and influencer trends brand marketers need to know about right now

Major brands are increasingly integrating creator-led content into traditional media and high-profile experiential events to drive consumer engagement. Recent initiatives include McDonald's adapting a years-old viral TikTok into a national TV spot and FIFA collaborating with YouTube for a first-of-its-kind creator soccer tournament in New York. These developments, alongside new campaigns from Huda Beauty and Play-Doh, signal a shift toward deeper brand-creator partnerships that leverage platform-specific trends and live experiences.

McDonald’s has demonstrated the longevity of viral content by featuring creator Serena Neel in a new 15-second television commercial. The spot is directly inspired by a TikTok video Neel posted nearly four years ago, where she edited multiple clips of herself ordering a McChicken at a drive-thru. This move highlights a growing trend of brands mining historical social media content to create authentic, creator-driven advertisements for traditional broadcast channels, effectively bridging the gap between social media trends and mainstream marketing.

In the digital and experiential space, FIFA hosted its first-ever YouTube Creator Cup in New York’s Central Park, featuring over a dozen influencers in an exhibition match livestreamed across FIFA's channel and participating creators' accounts. Meanwhile, Huda Beauty tapped into 2016 nostalgia for its new Liquid Matte Mousse campaign, featuring influencers Kristy Sarah, Mimii Tafara, and Christina Kirkman in a long-form social spot that references past beauty trends. Play-Doh also targeted the growing 'kidult' demographic through a partnership with creator @missindinyc for a DIY event at the Whitney Museum, showcasing how brands are diversifying their creator strategies to reach specific niche audiences.

However, the intersection of AI and creator content remains a point of friction, as seen with Meta’s recent rollout and swift removal of its Muse Image feature. The tool originally allowed users to modify public Instagram images using AI by default, sparking significant backlash from creators concerned about the unauthorized remixing of their content and likeness. Meta scrapped the feature within days of its launch, echoing a similar controversy faced by TikTok’s Meme Remixer in April and underscoring the ongoing tension between platform innovation and creator intellectual property rights.