Stop Choosing Whether Creators Are Creative or Media

There’s a question that keeps popping up in campaign planning meetings.

“Is the creator budget coming from creative or media?”

Good question.

Except there’s a small problem.

The answer is yes.

Creators are one of the weirdest things to happen to advertising because they stubbornly refuse to fit inside the neat little boxes we spent decades creating.

Are they talent?

Yep.

Are they production?

Sometimes.

Are they a distribution channel?

Absolutely.

Are they creative?

They bloody well should be.

Are they media?

Also yes.

And yet we keep trying to force them to pick a side.

CREATIVE ← creator → MEDIA

Choose your fighter.

Maybe the problem isn’t creators.

Maybe it’s the boxes.

The Old System Was Beautifully Simple

Once upon a time, everything had its place.

The creative agency made the ad.

The production company made the ad look expensive.

The media agency bought somewhere to put the ad.

The talent appeared in the ad.

And the audience watched it.

Everyone knew where they sat.

Everyone had a budget.

Everyone had a spreadsheet.

Beautiful.

Then creators wandered in and fucked up the seating plan.

Because a creator can come up with the idea, shoot it, edit it, star in it, publish it and distribute it to an audience they spent five years building.

Sometimes from their bedroom.

Before lunch.

That’s not particularly considerate of the traditional agency model.

A Creator Isn’t Just Somewhere to Put Your Ad

Treat creators purely as media and something strange happens.

You start buying them like placements.

How many followers?

What’s the CPM?

What’s the reach?

When can they post?

Here’s the script.

Please say these seven product benefits.

Make sure the bottle faces camera.

Mention the offer.

Tag us.

Thanks.

And suddenly you’ve taken someone people voluntarily follow because they’re interesting and turned them into a slightly less convincing version of your banner ad.

Excellent work.

The audience can smell it immediately.

Because creators aren't valuable simply because they have access to eyeballs.

They understand how to earn those eyeballs.

They know their audience.

They know their rhythms.

They know how they speak.

They know when something feels wrong.

They know what will get absolutely annihilated in the comments.

That knowledge is creative value.

Not just media value.

But They’re Not Just Creative Either

Here’s where it gets annoying.

Because the opposite is also true.

You can’t treat a creator exactly like traditional talent.

An actor can appear in your campaign.

A creator can appear in your campaign and then put that campaign directly in front of an audience who already knows them.

That changes the equation.

They bring distribution.

Recognition.

Trust.

Community.

Comments.

Context.

An existing relationship with the people you’re trying to reach.

If a creator has spent years earning an audience, their audience isn’t an incidental bonus attached to the creative.

It’s part of the asset.

So when someone asks:

“Should we pay for the creator from the production budget or the media budget?”

Maybe stop.

You're trying to use an old accounting structure to explain a new kind of advertising.

Creators Are Creative Media

There.

We fixed it.

You’re welcome.

A great creator sits somewhere in the messy middle between creative, talent, production and distribution.

And that’s precisely what makes them useful.

They can help shape the idea.

They can tell you whether your beautifully written script sounds completely insane coming out of their mouth.

They can make the thing.

They can star in the thing.

They can distribute the thing.

And then they can see exactly what their audience thought of the thing.

All before your post-campaign brand-lift presentation has found a mutually convenient time in everyone’s calendar.

That feedback loop is incredibly powerful.

So why are we bringing creators into the process five minutes before publishing?

Stop Giving Creators Finished Ideas

This one hurts.

A campaign gets developed.

Strategy approved.

Concept approved.

Scripts approved.

Production planned.

Everything is locked.

Then someone says:

“We should probably get some influencers.”

Great.

Now we find a creator and hand them an idea they had absolutely nothing to do with.

“Can you make this feel authentic?”

No.

You made authenticity impossible six weeks ago.

If you’ve chosen a creator because they understand their audience and know how to make interesting things, perhaps let them do some of that.

Bring them in earlier.

Show them the problem.

Show them the strategy.

Show them the half-formed idea.

Ask what they’d do.

Maybe they’ll make it better.

Maybe they’ll tell you something you don’t want to hear.

Even better.

KBD’s broader approach is to use social behaviour and platform knowledge to shape creative from the beginning, rather than trying to retrofit finished advertising into social afterwards.

Creators should be part of that thinking.

Not a distribution checkbox at the bottom of the media plan.

Your Best Creator Might Also Be Your Best Talent

We talked about this with TVCs.

Brands can spend months working with creators.

You know who performs.

You know who people watch.

You know whose content gets shared.

You know who can actually hold attention.

Then it’s time for the big campaign.

And suddenly everyone forgets they exist.

“We need to cast some talent.”

Do you?

Maybe.

Or maybe the person you’ve spent the last year proving your audience loves watching should be standing in front of the very expensive camera.

Creators don't necessarily need to be the little social extension of the big campaign.

They can be the campaign.

Put them on TV.

Put them on billboards.

Put them in the cinema.

Build a character around them.

Let their social content feed the campaign and let the campaign feed their social content.

Stop deciding where “creator” ends and “proper advertising” begins.

Your customer definitely isn’t thinking about it.

And Stop Measuring Half the Job

If we call creators “media,” we risk obsessing over distribution.

Reach.

Impressions.

CPM.

Views.

If we call them “creative,” we risk looking only at the work.

Was it good?

Was it funny?

Did we like it?

Did the Creative Director nod slowly when it finished?

Neither is enough.

The interesting bit is the combination.

Did the creative earn attention?

Did the creator make the idea better?

Did their audience respond?

Did people watch?

Did they share?

Did they click?

Did they buy?

Did we learn something that makes the next piece better?

That last one matters.

Because creators can give you something traditional advertising often struggles to provide quickly:

A direct feedback loop between an idea and an audience.

Make.

Publish.

Learn.

Make again.

That sounds pretty useful.

This Is Going to Make Someone in Finance Uncomfortable

Sorry.

Actually, no.

Not sorry.

Because this does make budgeting messier.

If creators are creative and media, which department owns them?

Who briefs them?

Who negotiates?

Who measures them?

Whose budget gets charged?

Who gets to put the successful campaign in their awards entry?

These are legitimate operational questions.

But they shouldn't dictate the creative model.

If your internal structure requires creators to become one thing or another because that makes the spreadsheet easier to manage, you’ve optimised the campaign around your accounting system.

Your audience does not care which cost centre paid for the TikTok.

They care whether it was interesting.

The Lines Are Already Dead

Creative.

Media.

Talent.

Production.

Distribution.

Nice clean categories.

Useful for invoices.

Increasingly useless for explaining how people actually encounter advertising.

A creator can be all five.

A TVC can start on TikTok.

A social idea can end up on television.

A comment can become the next ad.

A creator can become the face of the brand.

A piece of organic content can tell you where to spend your next million dollars.

That messiness isn't a problem to solve.

It’s the opportunity.

Kill Boring Dead already exists to challenge the default-setting, “we’ve always done it this way” mentality that produces safe, forgettable marketing.

Maybe “creators are either creative or media” deserves to go in the same bin.

So next time somebody asks:

“Are creators creative or media?”

Don't pick one.

Ask a better question.

What could they be if we stopped making them choose?