The creator economy has matured to a point where brands can no longer afford to view it as a decorative media channel or a peripheral part of the marketing mix. Creators are no longer merely amplification channels meant to extend a campaign’s visibility after the strategy has been decided and the planning is complete. Influencers who, true to their name, influence nano, micro and macro communities and authentically build brand trust with people in the region can no longer be treated transactionally or as plug-ins for one-off campaigns.
On the latest episode of Campaign Middle East’s On the Record podcast, Olfa Messaoudi, Chief Digital and Marketing Officer, L’Oréal Middle East, and Antoine Challita, UAE Country Head at Snap, discuss all this and more in a market where creator recommendations, social circles and community opinions carry significant weight and are becoming part of how consumers discover, assess and eventually spend on brands.
They explore a shift in the way brands and platforms partner with creators and consumers. The discussion moves beyond the vanity metrics of reach, impressions and engagement to touch upon credibility, education, measurement, cultural relevance and the importance of longer-term creator partnerships.
At the heart of the conversation is a simple but important idea: creators are most valuable when they are brought into the process early, onboarded with clarity on brand guidelines, given space to contribute community insights and be the voice for their followers, offered the opportunity to shape the work, and understood as people with communities and as an extension of brand and marketing teams, rather than as inventory with reach and influence.
For both L’Oréal and Snap, the future of creator marketing is less like buying a billboard and more like building a team: it requires patience, care, repeated interaction and the humility to listen before expecting growth.
Creators are no longer an add-on
Challita explained that one of the biggest mistakes brands make is bringing creators in too late. If the campaign idea, message and creative route are already finalised, creators are reduced to a distribution layer. His point is that their value sits much deeper: they understand the conversations already taking place among their audiences and can help shape work that feels more natural to those communities.
He also linked this to how discovery works in the GCC, where people often rely on social proof, personal networks and community opinion.
“The perception that creators are an add-on is fading,” said Challita. “There are still brands that consider them as reach amplifiers, or the extension of reach. I think that’s probably misplaced. Creators generally are a channel by themselves. They are not really simply an amplification channel. When you think about discovery in the GCC, we talk about it being around community validation. We talk about it being around word of mouth. So creators play an intrinsic role around conversations.”
The implication for marketers is clear: creators should not be treated as the final coat of paint on a finished campaign. They need to be part of the architecture. Challita argues that brands get more value when creators are invited into strategic planning, because that is when they can bring their understanding of tone, community and cultural timing into the work.
Challita added, “We need to bring creators more upstream into all the strategic planning that’s happening, so you’re empowering creators to leverage the things that they’re good at, which is authenticity and being connected to the community.”
Using the World Cup as an example, he explained that major cultural moments do not live only in the event itself; they continue in the conversations that happen around it.
Challita explained, “Conversations are not happening when the match is going on. Fandom goes beyond the match itself. If we look at our data, we had around 12.7bn impressions generated by Snapchatters alone during the last World Cup that was in Qatar.”
Beauty consumers are more informed, and they expect more
Messaoudi turned the conversation back to the consumer, highlighting how audience behaviour and preferences have changed significantly.
She explained that people have moved past polished brand films and aspirational imagery. She added that audiences are becoming more curious, more informed and more willing to interrogate claims.
Messaoudi explained that high-quality storytelling now needs to sit alongside creator-led education and recommendation, especially because creators can translate product knowledge into a language and emotion that communities understand.
She said, “Consumers are super educated. They’re informed. They know the product. They want to know the science behind it. But consumers are also looking for beautiful storytelling, very nice content and craftsmanship. They are looking for authenticity and trust. And this trust comes from creators who resonate with them.”
For L’Oréal, working with creators is not a new experiment. Messaoudi pointed to the company’s long-running use of creator “squads” across brands such as YSL and Kérastase. She added that the creator economy strategy works best when creators hear what brands cannot always hear, and when brands are willing to listen to them. This provides a lot of perspective to brands because creators sit close to the questions, hesitations, needs and everyday language of their communities. For a beauty brand, that proximity can help shape stronger product communication.
When L’Oréal works on new launches, creator insight can influence the campaign itself. The brand does not simply hand over a brief and wait for posts or a content calendar; instead, it uses creator feedback to understand what people want to know, how they speak about products and what kind of explanation may create a closer connection with specific cohorts of consumers.
She shared, “Recently, we worked with some content creators on new launches from La Roche-Posay and Garnier. What was important for us was to get their insight, because they have a lot of signals when they talk with their followers who are our consumers. They know what these consumers want, what works, what tone of voice they should use. So, instead of doing our own content in our way, we built the campaign together. We co-created the content with these creators.”
This is where Snap’s role becomes especially relevant in the discussion. Messaoudi described Snapchat as a platform where recommendations can feel closer to a personal exchange than a formal advertising message.
Her comparison was simple: people have always asked friends for advice. Social platforms have changed the scale and speed of that behaviour.
She explained, “Snapchat is an amazing platform because people are looking for peer-to-peer recommendations. They want to talk to a friend and take advice from a friend. Today, content creators can play that role at scale and really make an impact. Snapchat is beautiful for that because it’s a place where you feel safe. It’s authentic. It’s trusted. And it really makes content creators’ communities feel like they are talking to a friend.”
The creator sits between the celebrity and the friend
Challita brought in Snap’s own way of looking at creator proximity. On Snapchat, he said, creators sit in what the platform describes internally as a “middle circle”: not as distant as celebrities, but not quite the same as close friends either. That position gives them a distinctive role in how people absorb recommendations and form opinions.
The platform’s data, according to Challita, supports this sense of closeness. He said Snapchatters often perceive creators in a friend-like way, and that creator content has a notable effect on purchase decisions. This is why he believes marketers should look beyond audience size alone.
Challita said, “80 per cent of our Snapchatters view creators as friends. 86 per cent of our Snapchatters are impacted by creator content that they’re consuming on the purchase decisions that they’re making..”
He also explained that the more important question is not who has the biggest following, but who has the strongest relationship with the audience they already have.
In a region shaped by community-led commerce, a smaller creator with deep engagement can sometimes move people more effectively than a larger name with less relevance.
Taking this a step further, he added, “It’s also not about one viral moment. That’s not going to create the impact or the value that creators can bring to a business. It’s about consistency over time, and trust is built with consistency.”
A major part of L’Oréal’s approach is also the brand’s investment in the creator ecosystem itself.
Messaoudi pointed to the launch of LOREALISTAR in the GCC, a programme designed to build authentic, long-term relationships between the L’Oréal Group’s brands and the region’s digital creator community.
Open to creators with as few as 1,000 followers, the platform rewards genuine passion for L’Oréal brands with exclusive access to more than 20 iconic brands, upskilling opportunities, and visibility across L’Oréal’s brands.
Messaoudi explained, “Our objective is to build the next beauty entrepreneur in the region, to make them grow, to nurture their capabilities, while continuing to support the creator economy with masterclasses, empowerment and networking.”
The programme offers content creator education, masterclasses, networking opportunities, mentorship and access to exclusive experiences and the L’Oréal community, in addition to long-term collaboration opportunities.
“Whether they’re just starting out or already building an established community, we want to help creators at different stages of their journey develop their skills and build lasting careers in the industry,” said Messaoudi.
Measurement of creator influence and impact through the marketing funnel
The conversation then moved from influence to accountability. Messaoudi was clear that views and engagement still matter, but they are no longer enough. Marketers need to understand how creator content works across the consumer journey: whether people watch, save, share, remember, consider and eventually buy.
Her point was that some signals are more revealing than surface-level metrics. A save, for example, can suggest that a consumer wants to return to the content, learn more or perhaps make a purchase later. For beauty brands, that kind of behaviour can be especially meaningful.
She said, “Today, the content is not measured only by views and engagement. These KPIs still matter, but what we are really looking for today is the full consumer journey. It’s about content health. Are people watching it? How long are they watching it? It’s also about brand health. Is this content building awareness and the perception of my brand? Do people save my content? Because when someone saves content, it means, ‘I’m interested. I want to know more. I want probably to buy this product.’”
Challita added that the old idea that creators only build awareness is outdated. He said Snap sees creator-led activity having an effect across the funnel, from awareness and consideration to cost per purchase. That matters because creator marketing must increasingly stand up in conversations not only with marketing teams, but also with finance and leadership.
He said, “on ad awareness, whenever we’re comparing creator advertising versus branded creative, we see almost 1.8 times better effectiveness on the creator side. In the mid-funnel part, we are seeing 2.5 times more effectiveness when it comes to consideration through creator-led ads. We also see almost 25 per cent better efficiency when advertisers are using creator-led advertising on cost per purchase.”
Messaoudi supported this with an example from L’Oréal’s work with Snap on Kérastase.
She explained, “We tried something together on Snapchat with Kérastase. The point was to work with content creators to create real stories, real transformation, using the product and being true. This campaign, and the work that we have done closely with the creators, drove purchase, and it was very impactful. We discovered that the second biggest driver of purchase today is content creators. Media is still part of what we do, for sure, but content creation is the second key driver of purchase today.”
The parting advice: listen first, then build
As the discussion closed, Challita returned to the idea that influence is not the same as audience size. The most powerful creator partnerships are not necessarily built around the biggest names, but around depth of connection and longer time horizons.
His advice to brands was to stop seeing creators as a last-mile tactic. If creators understand the broader ambition, they can contribute more meaningfully to the work and build a stronger bridge between the brand and the consumer.
Challita said, “Trust drives influence, decision-making and action. Creators are not amplifiers of reach. Creators are the ones that translate what you’re really looking for, which starts with the consumer. It doesn’t matter who has the largest audiences within the creator space. What matters is the depth of the engagement they have with their communities.”
Messaoudi’s closing thought was a reminder that creators are not just another line in the media plan. Their greatest value lies in the conversations they are already having with consumers. For marketers, the task is to approach those conversations with curiosity rather than control.
She concluded, “Don’t think of creators as another media investment. Of course, they create content, but their greatest value is that they are having conversations every day with consumers. Consumers are extremely generous because they tell us stories, and they tell us exactly what they need. What we need to do is to be humble enough as marketers to listen, to act with humility, and to work with people to create authentic stories.”
What emerges from the conversation is a more mature view of creator marketing. The creator is not a megaphone held at the end of a campaign. The creator is not a shortcut to cultural relevance. At their best, creators are interpreters: they understand the dialects, emotions and real challenges of their communities, including the questions people are asking, the doubts they carry and the signals that brands may miss from a distance.
For L’Oréal Middle East, that means combining beauty craft with education, product storytelling with creator insight, and AI-led signals with human judgement. For Snap, it means helping brands understand that creator-led work can influence the full journey, from awareness to purchase, when it is planned properly and measured with discipline.
Both perspectives point to the same conclusion: the value of creators grows when brands stop treating them as temporary and transactional campaign elements and start building with them over time.
In a marketing landscape hungry for certainty, the creator economy offers something more human and less mechanical. It is a campfire, not a spotlight. People gather around it because the voice feels familiar, the story feels close and the recommendation feels earned.
For brands willing to listen, co-create and commit for the long run, that may be where the next chapter of advertising in the Middle East is written.
Watch the full podcast here.
CREDITS:
Guests:
– Olfa Messaoudi, Chief Digital and Marketing Officer, L’Oréal Middle East
– Antoine Challita,UAE Country Head, Snap
Host: Anup Oommen, Editor, Campaign Middle East
Production: Surajit Dutta, Content Production Manager, Motivate Media Group
Videography: Mark Mathew, Creative Content Producer, Motivate Media Group
Editing: John Melencion, Content Producer, Motivate Media Group
