Unilever's Influencer Shift Is Gamechanging But Not Without Challenge

The shift from Unilever to move 50 per cent of its investment into social and influencer remains genuinely significant for the marketing community.

It signals a seismic shift for our industry and validates something many of us have been advocating for years: that these platforms deserve a seat at the top table of marketing strategy.

Creators coming to the fore

For a long time, social and influencer marketing have been treated as secondary channels, despite their growing role in shaping culture and commerce. A move of this scale from one of the world’s largest advertisers sends a powerful message to the rest of the industry that these platforms are no longer experimental… they are fundamental.

However, as brands begin to move significant investment into social and influencer, the industry still faces a critical challenge: measurement and attribution.

Despite the scale of spend now flowing into these channels, many organisations still struggle to clearly link social activity to business outcomes.

Although 97 per cent of leaders believe they can communicate social media’s value, only 30 per cent of marketers believe they could measure social media ROI.

So while the investment from Unilever is hugely welcome and a strong signal that social deserves a strategic seat at the table – it also raises an important challenge for the industry.

As budgets increase, the opportunity now is not just to invest more, but to invest more intelligently. Brands cannot simply shift spend into social and influencer without the attribution systems needed to properly understand impact.

The measurement challenges

The reasons for social measurement remaining a struggle are numerous. Social is data-rich but insight-poor. There's no shortage of numbers, reach, engagement, but they don't ladder up to commercial outcomes.

Paid social is easier because the attribution infrastructure is built in. For organic and influencer, you need a separate study to understand real impact, and most brands won't fund one. Think Nielsen or similar – it's an additional cost most clients skip because the investment in influence still doesn’t constitute the study costs. 

And that absolutely could deter adoption if left unsolved. If a CMO can't connect creator spend to revenue, it becomes a faith-based decision, which social at times, still is for clients. 

That said, I don't think measurement alone is the whole story. Mark Ritson made a great point recently about micro-influencers specifically - the argument being that fragmenting your brand across hundreds of niche voices can actually undermine salience rather than build it. Which means even with robust measurement, brands could be optimising the wrong thing.

I’m genuinely excited to see the results of Unilever’s approach. If executed well, it could help accelerate the industry’s understanding of how social and influencer marketing deliver real business value.

But the next step for all of us is clear – investment must be matched with rigour.

Melo Meacher-Jones is the head of Social and influence for Iris Worldwide