Mumbrella recently ran an article with the headline: Brands accused of blowing it with creators by insisting on overly tight briefs.

You can have a read of it here, but I’ll be quoting much of it in this article.

For a long time now, creators/influencers, and social in general, have been treated as this foreign uncharted land where the rules are different. A strange exotic new world where, bizarrely, the locals don’t love deeply engaging with brands and prefer to be entertained rather than enjoy looking at logos. Strange alien beings that marketers view warily from afar with one of those weird extendable eyepieces that pirates use in the movies.

A place where we have to shed our shackles and just ‘let the creators do their thing’ because ‘they know what entertains audiences’. Not dissimilar to the other small imaginary windows created for the Superbowl, where as a result some people actually get more excited about the ads than the game, and April 1st, where for one day of the year brands let themselves get a little ‘weird and wacky’. In some ways, it’s been beneficial in allowing fun creative to thrive where it otherwise wouldn’t. (We grew the Maxibon Aus TikTok from scratch to 17k followers, and it’s pretty damn weird in there - https://www.tiktok.com/@maxibonaus)

Of course, the obvious truth here is that human beings don’t animorph into completely different ad-loving or hating creatures based on what screen they’re looking at, or what day of the year it is, or what football game is on. Nobody wants to be sold to. Nobody enjoys being forcibly interrupted. Everyone wants to be entertained. I mean, let’s be real for a second, when have you ever flicked your gaze from ‘the small screen’ to ‘the big screen’ and suddenly wanted to look at an ad?

The idea that ‘people don’t like ads that look like ads’ being exclusive to one particular screen, and not just a general truth, is a weird lie that we’ve all decided to collectively believe. And if we simply took the approach that we do to social and the Superbowl across the board, then things might more closely resemble how they were 10 or 20 years ago. (Remember 90s and 2000s advertising? Wild times.)

Now this is not a ‘we need to go back to the good old days’ post. It’s 2026. Time has changed, and media has vastly changed. It’s more so how we collectively approach commercial creativity, creators and creatives, and attention seeking. The science of marketing has mostly become a rational left-brain operation, attempting to turn creativity into a precise repetitive formula governed by arbitrary rules. Those of us in agency land have been laboured by this for a long time now, and creators are just starting to experience the exact same difficulties that we have.

Here’s some direct quotes from the article:

Brands are weakening the impact of influencer campaigns by being too controlling, creators have warned.

Speaking at Mumbrella360, content creator Maddy MacRae told the audience  she often receives “cookie-cutter” campaign briefs that “suck the story” out of content, with requirements such as featuring the brand logo within the first three seconds of a video.

I honestly laughed out loud reading this article. Not because it’s wrong or ridiculous, because there’s a lot of truth to it and the experiences and advice of these creators should be listened to. But more so the fact that this keeps being presented as something unique to ‘creators’. Because if you replaced ‘creators’ with ‘creatives/agencies’ then you simply get the exact same arguments we’ve been attempting to have for a decade. Raise your hand if you’ve been receiving increasingly dictatorial briefs that mostly focus on mandatories rather than any semblance of narrative, regardless of the media channel it appears on…

Those tensions are reflected in new research from Social Soup, which suggests restrictive briefs may be costing brands both talent and impact. A survey of 265 Australian creators found 51% have walked away from brand deals they felt were inauthentic, rising to 66% among those with more than 10,000 followers.

Creators cited overly scripted content, mismatched partnerships and unrealistic expectations among the reasons for declining work, while 71% said they understand their audiences better than the brands briefing them.

This is super interesting this bit, and I have to commend the creators who are really holding their ground. The fragmentation of media means that, by default, brands have less control over where and to who their messaging reaches. So they have to place more trust in external opinions. Which is understandably terrifying. But what other choice is there? And when it comes to creative - nobody else is capable of doing the work other than creatives/creators. Not media, not market research, not the C-suite, nobody. We’re the only people with runs on the board to creatively execute the strategy.

MacRae explained that an ad she created for Maybelline’s Sky High mascara is one of her most successful yet it didn’t mention the brand until 20 seconds in. “My best performing ads, [the brand] comes a bit later,” she said.

“Because the story comes first, the joke comes first, and then the payoff is the brand.”

I loved this bit. ‘…the story comes first, the joke comes first, and then the payoff is the brand.’ You mean… like how every ad was written before the term ‘best practices’ was invented? Earn people’s attention, disarm them with entertainment, and then connect them to the brand? People like that more than 30 seconds of heavy-handed branding? Egads, we’ve struck oil!

Wilson said brands need to rethink their approach, arguing that storytelling is more effective and that creators should be given clear objectives and budgets, then trusted to determine how best to communicate.

“I think storytelling works really well. And if you are going to work with a creator, you need to make sure you tell them this is our budget, this is our goal, and let them figure out how best to communicate because you’re paying them to communicate.”

Again. LOL. Storytelling is effective. Clear objectives and budgets. Trusted to determine how to best communicate. I reckon if I surveyed every single person reading this article to tell me what conditions led to their most effective work it would be the above. This is not a ‘creator strategy’. This is just brands and agencies/creatives/creators working together.

Work out what we need to say, what we need to achieve and what resources we have to get there, and then let the creatives create.

This is not new information. This is simply social creators discovering what we’ve always known.

Of course, like everything in life, the answer lies somewhere in the middle. A lot of creators are new to this game and have a lot to learn. We’re dealing with clients who are responsible for handling millions of dollars in budgets that define their careers. It’s understandable why they are reluctant to relinquish control. It’s up to us to all work together to create an environment where all of our respective expertise and experience is given adequate space. Empathy is required on both sides of the aisle, and that part is totally lacking with some of the creators brands try to deal with.

Because, with due respect to Instagram comedians, you don’t always know the best way to connect a brand or product with an audience. A lot of those rejected deals probably just required you to read between the lines and then work with the client to find a way forward, rather than giving up because you couldn’t run the skit you wanted. Creative resilience is part of the business.

But… there is a lot of insight in this article to consider. Because the end takeout here is if the strategy is right, the messaging is right, we’re all confident in the plan, and what’s now needed is the most effective execution - then let the people who create do their thing.

Hey guys, I know this is annoying. But need ad revenue to cover the hosting costs and keep this free. If you can click the below, it’s appreciated.

Whitelisting, Spark Ads, Partnership Ads — they're your highest-ROI channel in 2026. minisocial is the fastest way to scale them. Trusted by Our Place, Love Wellness, MadeGood, and Rocksbox.

Here's what brands say:

"Ads made with minisocial content outperform everything we've made in-house." — Michael, Growth Marketing Manager

"minisocial's cost per creator is cheaper than our in-house program." — Andrea, Digital Campaigns Manager

"The price for what you're getting is just insane. They handle every step." — Kaylee, Director of Marketing

Ready to turn creators into your best-performing ad channel?

Get Started Now