Bath & Body Works Bets Big on Creators 🧴

I’m excited to be back in your inbox, and for new readers, welcome! It’s been a while since the last edition. At the start of the year, I joined IZEA as VP of Creator Strategy & Innovation. After taking some time to settle in, I’m glad to get this newsletter going again.

Bath & Body Works is planning to increase influencer activity tenfold as part of its broader brand transformation, the latest signal that major consumer brands are rapidly scaling creator marketing.

During the company's Q4 2025 earnings call, CEO Daniel Heaf shared plans to dramatically expand the company’s use of influencers.

“We are really looking for those thousands of influencers that we recruit to be posting their content about our product and our brand in their voice,” Heaf said.

He pointed to the success of this approach among competitors and insurgent brands and sees creators as key to the company’s go-to-market strategy, particularly when it comes to reaching younger audiences such as women ages 25 to 30. He also views creators as a way to modernize the brand’s social presence and show up in ways that feel native and culturally relevant on the platforms consumers already use.

More broadly, Heaf sees creators as part of the company’s evolution from “a retailer to a global brand, one that leads with creativity, celebrates product, and creates culture.”

After Unilever CEO Fernando Fernandez made headlines for planning to work with 20 times more influencers and shift 50% of the company’s advertising budget toward social media and creators, a number of major brands have begun signaling similar moves. Bath & Body Works is the latest.

C-suite support like this is often the key to unlocking meaningful creator marketing budgets. But ultimately, how these investments are executed will determine whether creator marketing approaches the scale and spend of traditional marketing.

For brands looking to work with thousands—or even hundreds of thousands—of creators as Unilever has (over 300,000 in 2025, according to Fernandez), several challenges still need to be solved:

Creator marketing is still a relatively small share of most marketing budgets, but moves like this show how quickly that may change.

Follower count is one of the least reliable ways to evaluate LinkedIn creators. Yet it’s often the first metric brands focus on—leading to misaligned partnerships, wasted budget, and content that doesn’t convert.

With over 80% of B2B buyers saying creator content influences their purchasing decisions, getting creator selection right has never been more important.

That’s why I partnered with HubSpot to create a free resource to help you find the right creator partners for your campaigns:

Instagram is giving personal accounts access to creator tools, including content scheduling, trending audio, and the insights dashboard. Advanced tools like Trial Reels and Broadcast Channels will unlock at certain follower milestones, giving early-stage creators more ways to grow.

Facebook officially introduced Affiliate Partnerships, a hub that lets select creators connect with third-party affiliate programs like Amazon and Shopee, find products, and add affiliate links to their Reels and Posts. With affiliate marketing already a common revenue stream for creators, this allows Facebook to support the model without building a fully native affiliate platform like TikTok.

Threads added rich link previews for podcast video clips, letting creators upload clips with a preview card linking to the full episode. This helps convert more clip viewers into full-episode listeners while supporting Threads’ goal of becoming a hub for podcast creators and their audiences.

Threads is testing a shortcut for Direct Messages. When users add the phrase “DM Me” in a post or reply, it becomes a clickable link that starts a conversation. By removing the need to visit a user’s profile to send a DM, the feature could encourage more messaging on the platform.

TikTok continues to grown as a search engine, with nearly half of U.S. consumers using it to discover recipes, DIY tips, beauty advice, product recommendations, and more. Video tutorials, product reviews, personal stories, and influencer recommendations remain the most preferred formats. Brands and creators shouldn’t overlook optimizing for discovery on social media, even as AI search grows.

Pinterest and Amazon teamed up for a new integration that enables creators to connect their Amazon Storefronts to their Pinterest profiles. Creators can prominently display a link to their storefronts and automatically add Amazon affiliate links to their Pins. This streamlines the process for creators to make content shoppable and earn commissions, while also supporting Pinterest’s goal of making shopping accessible across every surface.

X introduced new creator features, including Exclusive Threads, which allows creators share part of a post publicly while paywalling the rest. A native Paid Partnership label also helps creators disclose sponsored posts. These are positive steps to better support creators, but the platform’s ongoing controversies continue to be a barrier for the broader creator ecosystem to find value in it.

LTK launched LTK AI, an AI-powered chatbot that provides shopping recommendations based on its ecosystem of creator content. Responses include relevant posts from creators, who receive proper credit and commissions when users make a purchase, creating a conversational entry point for discovery.

Adobe announced that its AI Assistant in Photoshop is now available in public Beta. From web or mobile, creators can use a chat-based interface to automatically apply edits to an image or receive step-by-step guidance. These make editing more seamless by letting creators leverage conversational AI to enhance their content.

Beehiiv rolled out On-Demand Ads, a new feature in its Ad Network. It lets creators access sponsorship opportunities instantly through a marketplace and insert ad slots directly in newsletters, monetizing based on CPM and CPC performance. On-Demand Ads come months after beehiiv expanded beyond newsletters with features like Digital Products. (Try beehiiv free for 14 days + get $20 off/month for 3 months when you sign up here.)

VSCO launched Galleries, a standalone app that lets photographers create collaborative online galleries. Multiple contributors, including photographers, organizers, and guests, can add photos in one place, reflecting modern workflows. The app continues VSCO’s efforts to support photographers throughout their creative journey.

The past few months have brought a wave of new reports exploring different aspects of the creator economy. Here are some of the stats that stood out to me:

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