Stuck in Influencer Cruise Control? Here’s how to go Full Throttle

I’m going to say this gently…the majority of brands are stuck approving safe, forgettable influencer campaigns.

But here’s the problem:

• Safe doesn’t trend.
• Safe doesn’t sell.
• Safe doesn’t stick.

The reason? The system brands today work in make bold, high-impact ideas risky and hard to justify. 

Without:

• Full-funnel strategy
• Clear proof of impact
• Fearless creative thinking 
• The capacity to execute at scale

…brands end up blending in, not standing out.

But here’s the opportunity: the brands willing to rethink the system are the ones who win and actually drive results. 

The answer?

Full throttle, full-funnel influencer marketing. The kind that earns the recognition your brand deserves, scales impact, and delivers proof it grows the bottom line.

And it all comes down to the 3 C’s:

📊Clarity - Leverage ROI methods that leadership can trust

The reason bold, scalable influencer ideas so often get shut down is simple: a lack of proof that the channel impacts your bottom line. 

Most brands measure influencer campaigns in one of two ways:

• Click-attributed methods – voucher codes and link clicks
• Vanity metrics – likes, comments, shares, or engagement rates

Both approaches are incomplete. Clicks and codes only capture short-term behaviour. Vanity metrics may feel good on paper, but they rarely translate into meaningful business outcomes.

This measurement challenge puts many brand leaders under pressure to justify their ideas and channel investment. 

Here’s the tea: most influencer revenue impact is indirect. Think about the last time you actually used a voucher code or clicked a tracked link. Chances are it wasn’t yesterday. Now think about the last time you bought something your favourite influencer recommended. You probably don’t even remember the exact post, and you may have purchased it days or weeks later through a completely different channel - in-store, via a search, or on the brand’s website.

At Charlie Oscar, we measure influencer and creator campaigns through MMM (Marketing Mix Modelling) to measure both the direct and indirect impacts of channel exposures. MMM has been a trusted measurement approach for decades, widely used across traditional channels like TV, OOH, and print - channels where direct attribution simply doesn’t exist.

Using MMM, we can see that 80% of influencer revenue is driven through indirect impacts - that is, from people whose behaviour is influenced by influencers but do not click on links or use voucher codes. Here we see influencer content having an old-fashioned broadcast impact. 

By leveraging measurement methods like this, you can tie influencer impact directly to outcomes leadership cares about. That clarity builds trust, eliminates guesswork, and makes it easier to approve bold campaigns with confidence.

Which brings us to our next C. 

💪Confidence - Embracing a full-funnel strategy for lasting scale

Now that you have clarity in what works, you have the confidence to think longer-term and full-funnel, rather than being overly focused on short-term bursts and treating influencers as an isolated channel.

Attention is fractured. Media is everywhere. This has made the customer journey blurred beyond recognition.

This is why brands shouldn’t silo influencer marketing within the confines of organic social anymore. To truly drive impact and a consistent brand experience, influencer campaigns have immense power to be omnichannel and full-funnel, ensuring that every piece of content and every partnership is working harder.

So what does this look like? 

Embracing influencer-led content and partnerships within wider digital channels: 

• Paid Media (Partnership Ad’s and Whitelisting Ad’s) 
• TVC 
• Display Ads 
• Live Shopping 
• Email Marketing 
• AIO (AI SEO) 

 And offline channels: 

• OOH 
• Pop-Up Experiences 
• Events 
• Print 

For those who really want to go full-throttle, you could also go beyond marketing channels and integrate influencers more deeply into your brand: 

• Product collaborations
• Hiring influencers as consultants (creative direction, product design etc.) 

When embracing influencers full-funnel and embedding them into the wider marketing mix, at Charlie Oscar, we see significantly enhanced results. 

For example, paid social campaigns perform 30%-50% stronger with influencer support than without.

But results like this only happen when the creative actually lands, bringing us to our last C. 

🔥Creativity - Fresh, fearless thinking 

You’ve got the clarity on ROI. You’ve got the confidence to embrace the channel to the fullest. But without killer creative execution, it’s just noise. 

When it comes to content, you’re not just competing with your direct competitors in a safe ad break anymore. You’re up against skit creators, meme makers, and reaction videos to the latest episode of The Summer I Turned Pretty, or simply just Netflix. It’s content and media houses that rack up millions of views. They're the real competition for captive eyeballs.

This is where an entertainment-first mindset becomes non-negotiable when crafting your ‘big idea’ for influencer creative. To unpack this shift, brand tracking platform Tracksuit partnered with creative agency Small World to produce the Entertain or Die report - a deep dive into how if you’re not entertaining as a brand, you may as well not exist. 

The first-of-its-kind research ranked 100 of the biggest and best brands in the world purely on entertainment value. 29 of the top 30 had revenue growth last year. Two-thirds of them had double-digit growth.

In short: loosen that grip on the brand bible and ask yourself if that over-engineered ad script, ticking every single USP, is actually content anyone would bother watching. It’s time to bridge the divide between the work you applaud and the work you greenlight. 

Ready to go full-throttle? Clarity. Confidence. Creativity. That’s the fuel.