CreatorIQ Connect 2025 wasn’t just a creator marketing conference — it was a reflection of an industry that’s maturing, driving business growth, and shaping culture.
Across more than two dozen sessions, one message was unmistakable: creators are no longer campaign contributors; they’re the connective infrastructure of modern marketing.
Here are 22 quotes that capture the insights, energy, and evolution defining the next chapter of creator-led growth — from community to commerce, from AI to authenticity.
1–4: We’re in the Age of Creator-Led Growth
The era of creator-led growth is defined by a fundamental business realignment. What began as influencer marketing has evolved into a performance-proven ecosystem where creators drive the full funnel: awareness, conversion, and loyalty.
“Budgets for creator marketing increased by a staggering 171%. This is not a fad spike. This is a complete structural change to how marketers go to market.”
— Chris Harrington, CEO, CreatorIQ
Welcome to the Age of Creator-Led Growth
“Creators are no longer just part of the strategy. They are the strategy.”
— Jonathan Stanley, VP Brand Marketing, Lowe’s
Risk vs. Reward: Brand Safety and Suitability in Creator Partnerships
“When creators become central to brand storytelling, performance follows. The brands that invest in creators as business partners — not as placements — are the ones scaling with purpose.”
— Kim Farrell, Global Head of Creators, TikTok
From the Ground Up: Building with Creators at the Core
“Ninety-four percent of organizations say creator content delivers higher ROI than digital marketing — often double or triple the return.”
— Chris Harrington, CEO, CreatorIQ
Welcome to the Age of Creator-Led Growth
CreatorIQ CEO, Chris Harrington onstage at CreatorIQ Connect LA
5–8: Authenticity, Alignment, and Creative Freedom
Today’s high-performing creator partnerships are built on creative trust, not creative control. Armed with deep audience, social platform, and cultural insights, creators can and should be strategic partners, not just content engines. The ideal brand-creator collaborations foster authenticity—the not-so-secret, but hard to achieve, driver of engagement and conversion.
Authenticity scales when brands and creators align on values, not just deliverables.
These creators showed that longevity and creative freedom drive both trust and performance.
“What’s really needed is creative alignment. When the brand knows who they are and I know who I am, we figure out how to come together in harmony.”
— Chaz Smith, Creator
The Creator Perspective: Live AMA
“I love when partnerships last at least three months — it lets me show how the product actually works over time.”
— Shima Katouzian, Creator
The Creator Perspective: Live AMA
“When I can share how a product really impacts my life, my audience listens. They skip ads, but they don’t skip stories.”
— McCall Mirabella, Creator
The Creator Perspective: Live AMA
“You’ll see a lot more creators as brand founders or even creative directors. [Creators] know our audience so well—what they want, what they’ll pay, and what will surprise them.”
— Arshia Moorjani, Founder, Mary Story
Influencer to Founder: Scaling From Content to Company
The Creator Perspective: Live AMA
9–12: Brand Safety has Matured Into Risk Mitigation, Suitability, and Fit
In creator marketing, traditional brand safety has matured into brand suitability and brand fit. Marketers are shifting from checking safety boxes to cultivating contextual resonance. The brands leading this space aren’t just avoiding risk; they’re embracing creators who expand their values into new audiences and cultural spaces. Brand safety has evolved into a living, strategic dialogue between values, culture, and context.
Across Connect sessions, leaders agreed that the next phase of creator marketing is not about saying “no” to risk—it’s about saying “yes” to relevance.
“A creator can be brand safe but not brand suitable. [Lowe’s is] an affordable brand, so a high-end designer might pass safety, but not fit our audience.”
— Jonathan Stanley, Lowe’s
Risk vs. Reward: Brand Safety and Suitability in Creator Partnerships
“Brand safety used to mean control. Now it means partnership — understanding where creators can stretch the brand in ways that are still true to who we are.”
— Michelle Miller, Chief Marketing Officer, Vegamour
The Leaders’ Playbook to Scalable, Enduring Creator Programs
“For us, brand safety is about partnership. Suitability changes moment to moment — it’s not a policy, it’s a practice.”
— Michelle Miller, Chief Marketing Officer, Vegamour
The Leaders’ Playbook to Scalable, Enduring Creator Programs
On stage during the keynote, CreatorIQ VP of Product Innovation Nate Harris announced the launch of SafeIQ, CreatorIQ’s advanced AI-powered brand safety solution:
“Your risk may be mitigated. Your suitability may be perfect. But are you scheduled to go live during a time of tension or a time of tragedy? Do you really understand your audience sentiment?
Technology needs to adapt to your brand's nuance and suitability. The technology we build at CreatorIQ must really solve for all three of these things to provide a robust aid to your brand safety. SafeIQ is our groundbreaking new approach to brand safety for creative marketing. It goes beyond the technology limitations of the past. It's multi-modal. It is always learning. It's a solution that helps you make sure that your creative partnerships avoid controversy and land the way that you imagined they would.”
Learn more about SafeIQ here: Welcome to the Age of Creator-Led Growth
Nate Harris, CreatorIQ VP of Product Innovation
13–15: The Commerce Connection
Creator-led commerce is the new performance marketing. Brands are using affiliate, shoppable video, and creator storefronts to close the loop between storytelling and sales — turning influence into infrastructure and trust into transaction. Commerce and community are no longer separate funnels.
These leaders demonstrated that authenticity converts — with creators directly driving measurable business outcomes.
“Affiliate is the new brand deal. It’s not coupon codes — it’s creators driving measurable sales.”
— Bridget Dolan, YouTube Shopping
How to Cultivate Your Creator Community
Gabrielle Pajer from Awin explained:
“It’s never a set-it-and-forget-it solution. Success comes from continuous activation and optimization—because creators are the ones keeping the community engaged and the sales funnel moving.”
Creators as Affiliates: Accelerating the Path to Purchase
“When creators share everything—the behind-the-scenes, the unfiltered—it transforms their relationship with their community. That intimacy drives larger lifts in add-to-cart and purchases.”
– Snapchat’s Fintan Gillespie
Monetization Wins for Creators and Brands
16–18: Human-Led AI
AI has become an accelerator — but creativity, empathy, and connection remain uniquely human. The most effective marketers use AI to increase efficiency and insight, not replace the human imagination that powers authentic storytelling. AI is transforming how creator programs operate, but not why they work.
As these leaders reminded the audience, empathy, creativity, and connection remain the irreplaceable human advantage.
“AI should serve your voice — it should never be your voice.”
– Chris Harrington, CreatorIQ
Welcome to the Age of Creator-Led Growth
“We use AI to create efficiency, to generate creative output, and to understand how people access information. But the goal isn’t to replace creativity — it’s to amplify it.”
– Natalie Silverstein, Chief Innovation Officer, Collectively
Human-Led, AI Accelerated: The New Rules of AI in Creator Marketing
“The jury is still out on how AI-generated or AI-enhanced content will be received. What matters most is context — the human layer.”
– Nate Harris, VP Product Innovation, CreatorIQ
Human-Led, AI Accelerated: The New Rules of AI in Creator Marketing
Human-Led, AI Accelerated: The New Rules of AI in Creator Marketing
19–22: The Rise of Operational Maturity
The creator economy has matured from creativity to enterprise-grade influence. The most sophisticated brands aren’t just running creator programs — they’re building marketing organizations and processes with creators at the center. That means unified data, shared KPIs across teams, and global workflows that make influence measurable, repeatable, and scalable. In these organizations, creator marketing isn’t siloed under social; it’s a cross-functional growth engine tied to product, retail, and performance.
“We’ve moved as an industry away from experimentation. We know [creator marketing] works, but how do you drive these outcomes efficiently, safely and at scale? You need infrastructure that delivers on the operational maturity that is required of this new opportunity. Operational efficiency is going to be your biggest competitive advantage.”
- Chris Harrington, CreatorIQ
Welcome to the Age of Creator-Led Growth
“When you're looking at operational excellence, it's about things like time saved… risk reduction and brand safety… visibility to say we know exactly what we spent with our creators, how they performed, and how to optimize our approach moving forward.”
- Kate Brady, PepsiCo
The Power of a Center of Excellence
“Scaling creator marketing isn’t just about signing more creators — it’s about systems. The teams that win are the ones who’ve built workflows, regional alignment, and centralized data so insights flow across the organization.”
— Liz Grampp, former VP Marketing, Moose Toys
Risk vs. Reward: Brand Safety and Suitability in Creator Partnerships
“When every team — social, PR, media, and retail — speaks the same language around creators, you move from moments to momentum.”
— Jonathan Stanley, VP Brand Marketing, Lowe’s
Risk vs. Reward: Brand Safety and Suitability in Creator Partnerships
Risk vs. Reward: Brand Safety and Suitability in Creator Partnerships
🧭 Closing Thought
The conversations at CreatorIQ Connect proved what many of us already feel every day: creator marketing isn’t a discipline anymore — it’s the dominant form of modern marketing.
From trust to transaction, from AI to authenticity, creators are redefining what brand growth looks like.
Brand growth that drives measurable results. Because the ROI of authenticity isn’t anecdotal — it’s operational.
The creator era isn’t coming. It’s already here.
Want to go deeper? Relive all the CreatorIQ Connect 2025 sessions.