In this 2026 kickoff episode, hosts Ceci Carloni and Nii Ahene tackle three stories, two of which were built from original Net Influencer research that reveal where the real gaps and opportunities exist in the creator economy:

🤝 Trust Isn't Declining—It's Just Misunderstood: A Harvard Business Review piece challenges the narrative that influencer trust is eroding, arguing that authenticity gets co-created through interactions between creators, brands, agencies, and audiences. Nii introduces the concept of "Content-Audience Fit" (CAF)—the idea that brands can't just drop the same activation across 100 creators and expect results. The real issue isn't trust disappearing; it's brands treating influencer marketing like a media buy instead of a relationship that requires genuine alignment.

📊 The CRM That Doesn't Exist: Net Influencer's roundtable with 24 industry professionals revealed zero consensus on how agencies manage creator relationships at scale. From Salesforce to Airtable to Google Sheets to custom builds—the infrastructure layer is still wide open. We debate whether this chaos reflects the beauty of a people-first industry or signals massive opportunity for innovation, and why one-size-fits-all tools may never work when workflows vary wildly across platforms, creator types, and campaign objectives.

🗑️ What the Industry Needs to Ditch: In a survey of 77 creator economy professionals, four themes dominated what needs to be left behind: late payments, vanity metrics, broken measurement, and over-scripting creators. But what surprised us most? The near-universal alignment on these issues. We explore what should have made the list (hint: the AI vs. creator debate), why the organic vs. paid divide needs to die, and what excites us most about the industry's continued professionalization heading into 2026.

From reframing trust as a co-creation process to exposing infrastructure gaps to identifying what's holding the industry back—this episode captures both the maturity and growing pains of an ecosystem finding its footing.

The Big Three by Influence Weekly: 3 Biggest Stories. 1 Essential Conversation.

In our second guest episode, host Ceci Carloni sits down with George Mani, Chief Growth Officer at ehko.ai, for a provocative conversation about how creators are becoming the new media companies—and why traditional media's resistance to change is creating the opportunity of a generation.

📺 The Death of Traditional Media: George shares his journey from finance to media, witnessing firsthand how zero-click search, walled gardens restricting traffic, and the expensive TV newsroom model are all fundamentally broken. His work with multicultural publishers revealed a harsh truth: brands showing up only for Heritage Months without year-round authenticity is bad business—and the $1.7 trillion LGBTQ purchasing power proves multicultural isn't niche anymore.

🔥 Creator Burnout & The Pressure Cooker: With media budgets shifting from 10% to 70% flowing through walled gardens, creators face unprecedented pressure from brands expecting unlimited scale at unsustainable rates. George unpacks why the "more is more" advertising mentality doesn't work in the creator economy, how creators receive tens of thousands of DMs daily, and why the industry needs to shift from quantity metrics to quality influence.

🤖 AI as Augmentation, Not Replacement: ehko.ai's mission is to create digital "auras" of creators—not headless avatars, but authentic extensions that handle administrative burden while preserving the human connection that makes influence work. George delivers a bold prediction: within years, AI-generated content will flood social platforms, but this will only make genuine human creators more valuable. He argues AI should automate tedious tasks so creators can focus on what matters: building community and producing content.

From why creators are the new media infrastructure to how brands must fundamentally rethink measurement in the walled garden era to building sustainable economic futures for creators—this conversation captures a watershed moment where the entire media ecosystem is being rebuilt in real time.

The Big Three by Influence Weekly: 3 Biggest Stories. 1 Essential Conversation.

In this year-end episode, hosts Ceci Carloni and Nii Ahene explore three stories that reveal how brands are fundamentally restructuring around creator-first strategies:

🧼 Unilever Admits Defeat (And Wins): The CPG giant's home care division transformed Cleanipedia—a 20-year-old cleaning tips website—into a global creator platform working with 2,000 creators across multiple countries. Their new CEO strategy includes "Said by Others" as a core pillar, essentially admitting that creators deliver brand messages better than Unilever itself. We explore this massive power shift and whether raw, unpolished, socially-native content from regular people is now the winning formula for legacy brands.

🏨 Radisson's Creator Hub Revolution: The global hospitality brand launched a platform specifically for nano influencers across 210 hotels, trading free three-night stays for content instead of cash payments. We debate whether this democratizes access for smaller creators or risks normalizing unpaid work, and if brands building their own internal creator systems signals the end of agencies and marketplaces.

📊 The M&A Market Awakens: Despite a 69% drop in deals last year, 2025 saw a major rebound with blockbuster acquisitions like Publicis buying Captivate for $175M. Quartermass Advisors' new report predicts even more $100M+ deals in 2026—but here's the twist: all the value is going to companies that help brands work with creators, not companies that help creators themselves. We explore what this means for where the real power and money sits in the creator economy.

From Unilever giving up brand control to Radisson building creator infrastructure to M&A revealing who actually captures value—this episode shows how 2025 reshaped the fundamental structure of the creator economy.

The Big Three by Influence Weekly: 3 Biggest Stories. 1 Essential Conversation.

The Big Three by Influence Weekly: 3 Biggest Stories. 1 Essential Conversation.