‘It’s a real-life career’: How brands can promote better care of influencers

Influencer marketing has come a long way, but there’s still work needed to promote real representation and offer creators fair treatment.

Agency SevenSix runs an influencer pricing report each year, which in 2024 found white influencers earn the highest average fee for Instagram Reels at £1,637.62, compared to black influencers earning on average £1,080.41. South Asian influencers were found to make on average £1,135 per reel, East Asian influencers earn £1,009.55 and Southeast Asian influencers earn £700.63.

The data also revealed a bias favouring influencers of lighter skin tones. An analysis of Instagram Reels uncovered a skin colour pay gap of approximately 44.63%, with influencers of ‘light’ skin tones earning on average £1,675 per post, versus £928 for those with ‘dark tan’ skin.

Age bias was also found to be an issue, with influencers aged 18-39 earning 144.34% more on TikTok than those aged 40 plus.

The creator career and journey is a very lonely one, and a very isolating one.

Sophie Crowther, FiveTwoNine

SevenSix founder and CEO, Charlotte Stavrou, started the Influencer Pricing Report after finding the brands and agencies approaching the team to work with their talent weren’t offering suitable fees.

“We needed that quantitative data to say this is an issue,” she explains.

In her view the pricing situation is staying the same or in some cases getting worse.

“Even though we have seen diversity improve to an extent, I do believe that we are still seeing white faces being picked over creators of colour,” Stavrou states.

To support creators of colour, SevenSix offers campaign management ideation, helps them to source accountants and understand their finances, while also thinking about what their careers look like five to 10 years down the line.

“A lot of people see content creation as this frivolous side hustle that people do on the internet, but actually, for a lot of people, it’s a real-life career,” says Stavrou.

She points out there are lots of resources for marketers in general, but not many resources for influencers to “embed them into the industry”.

‘More often than not paid late’

Discourse around fairness in the creator economy is being heard more often. Just this week (1 July), YouTube published the findings of its first-ever UK Creator Consultation, calling on government, industry and the general public to formally recognise creators as a profession.

According to the consultation, 56% of UK Creators don’t feel as if they have a voice in shaping government policies that impact their work, such as taxes, despite generating £2bn for the UK economy and supporting over 45,000 jobs.

The consultation calls for a dedicated HMRC tax code for creators, training schemes and a dedicated minister for creators.

A lot of people see content creation as this frivolous side hustle that people do on the internet, but actually, for a lot of people, it’s a real-life career.

Charlotte Stavrou, SevenSix

Brands and agencies are also increasingly being called out for bad behaviour by creators on social media. An example is agency Influencer, ran by creator Caspar Lee.

One anonymous creator, who worked with Influencer for a brand campaign, calls the agency “demanding”, “rude” and “blunt” in terms of the expectations for delivering content throughout the process.

When it came to getting paid, the payment didn’t arrive until four months after the campaign end date and the fee was only paid once the creator had reached out to the brand behind the campaign.

They call it a “nightmare of chasing” and say the payment, which was a third of their usual rate, “magically happened” after they directly contacted the brand.

“It wasn’t a pleasant experience, to the point where I cried over the stress it was causing me,” says the creator.

They explain influencers are “more often than not” paid late and at the time of speaking had five payments overdue. These outstanding fees could well have been their month’s rent that they were relying on, the creator adds.

“It comes down to people not taking us seriously,” they argue.

The best experiences they’ve had when working with brands is when there is no “middle-man” agency involved. They are calling for greater regulation, education and 30-day payment terms, alongside creators being taken “more seriously” in the industry.

Stavrou has often seen “disgusting payment terms” and challenges brand managers to think about whether they have to wait 90 or 120 days for their salary.

“Why is it that a creator you have booked, and probably rushed for their content, has to wait more than a month?” she questions.

Accessible campaigns

The SevenSix report also finds approximately 30.76% of influencers with a disability reported being either consistently or sometimes treated differently based on their disability.

Diageo has previously stated its aim to make sure it’s “hiring the most talented and diverse teams” in order to ensure “consumers around the world feel represented”, in a bid to help its influencer marketing “smash stereotypes”.

Purple Goat is one agency working with brands to promote inclusive, diverse marketing. The agency partnered with train company Avanti West Coast on a campaign which saw four disabled influencers create 16 pieces of Instagram content aimed at boosting membership for Avanti’s new accessible rail travel Facebook group. The campaign generated 8,941 impressions and 4,465 engagements.

‘Not just transactional’: Dove on the value of treating influencers as ‘strategic partners’

Accessibility social media executive at Avanti, Martin Byrne, explains accessible travel is “at the forefront” of everything the train operator does and it often reaches out to the disabled influencer community for input.

For Byrne, using influencers makes the brand “real” and “relatable”, pushing forward the message that “anybody can go on a train”.

When it came to working with the influencers careful decisions were made, such as which train station the content was filmed at to ensure there were ample accessibility features, which “helped the influencers”. Working with influencers also gave Avanti insight into the “granular detail”, such as how accessibility features can be improved in the real world.

Going forward, Byrne urges brands to “involve all accessibility conversations in all marketing material”.

Tackling burnout

To support creators, influencer agency Billion Dollar Boy formed FiveTwoNine last year – a free, accessible community for creator entrepreneurs.

The goal was to combat the loneliness and burnout creators may feel, while helping them with the logistics that come with the career, such as understanding intellectual property and financial literacy.

“The creator career and journey is a very lonely one, and a very isolating one,” says Sophie Crowther, head of creators at FiveTwoNine.

“Very soon, they can isolate themselves from friends, family who just don’t understand what they’re going through.”

The nature of the work being largely remote also impacts wellbeing. In order to help, FiveTwoNine and Billion Dollar Boy have trained mental health first aiders in their teams.

Almost two-thirds (64.6%) of marketers agree burnout is having a negative impact on the careers of content creators, according to a survey of 500 UK marketers carried out by Billion Dollar Boy.

Most (70.8%) agree burnout was a widespread challenge for content creators, with 75.2% agreeing brands have a responsibility to protect creator wellbeing.

Some 60.4% of the sample believe creators receive adequate support from brands to protect them from burnout, with just 15.6% in disagreement. More than half (58.6%) believe creators receive adequate support from advertising agencies, versus 16.6% who disagree.

The majority of respondents (79.4%) agree platforms have a responsibility to protect creator wellbeing, while 61.8% believe creators already receive adequate support. Just 18% claim creators are not being supported by social platforms.

It wasn’t a pleasant experience, to the point where I cried over the stress it was causing me.

Anonymous creator

As part of the research, Billion Dollar Boy also surveyed 1,000 creators. More than half (52%) have experienced burnout as a direct result of their career, leading nearly two in five (37%) to actively consider leaving the profession altogether.

Two-fifths (40%) cite creative fatigue as a key source of burnout, followed by demanding workloads (31%) and constant screen time (27%). However, when asked to rank these causes by severity, financial instability emerged as the top factor (55%) among those who have experienced burnout.

Indeed, while 61.8% of UK marketers think creators already receive adequate support, around half of creators feel they receive adequate support from brands (48%), agencies (49%) and platforms (49%).

Crowther says creators are looking for upskilling and “access to business knowledge” to help them manage the creator economy, as well as a community to find people to connect and relate to.

She advises brands to acknowledge creators as partners and make them feel as if they’ve “been selected for a reason”. Crowther also advises “fair” contractual terms and payment structures, alongside longer-term partnerships rather than one-off deals.

“If a brand is able to commit to a certain number of months, it does go a long way and you will get more out of a creator who feels like there’s an investment, not just of money, by the brand,” she adds.

The fact influencers and talent agents are becoming “more vocal” about the lack of payments signals a need for better communication with creators, says Crowther.

Brands and agencies are using SevenSix’s Influencer Pricing report as part of her consultancy service to inform their pricing structures and what inclusive campaigns look like.

Stavrou wants the wider advertising industry to recognise creators more, explaining payment and the measurement of influencer marketing are two issues SevenSix plans to tackle more in the future.

Marketing Week will continue to explore the creator economy in future articles in our Influencers Explored series