If People Are Sick of Influencers, Should Your Business Still Work With Them?
People are tired of the stereotypical influencer, but trust is shifting to smaller creators, and most UK brands plan to spend more. Here's how to decide whether you should invest in influencer marketing and how to choose who to work with if you do.
On 31 August 2026, the chair umpire at the US Open paused Naomi Osaka's first-round match to ask a group of influencers to settle down. They had been filming content in a suite at Arthur Ashe Stadium during play, under a bright light and loud enough to be heard on court. The US Tennis Association had given around 100 content creators credentials for this year's tournament, almost double the 54 it invited in 2025.
If you're weighing up influencer marketing for your business, it's a useful moment to look at closely. The backlash online was loud, but the more telling comment came from Coco Gauff a few days later. She said she had no problem with influencers, then suggested the brands hosting them carry some of the responsibility: "It may be on some of the brands too, maybe to have a sign plastered in the suite so that they know."
That's the part founders tend to skip. When you pay someone to represent your business, you buy their audience and their behaviour together. And right now, a lot of people are fed up with the behaviour.
The short answer is yes, but the influencer people are sick of is rarely the one a small business should be hiring anyway.
What are people tired of when they say they're sick of influencers?
Mostly, they're tired of one type of influencer: the one whose content gives you a life to look at and nothing to take away.
You know the one. A beautiful flat, a beautiful wardrobe, Pilates and matcha, and not much said about anything else. Scroll through enough of them and they blur together. When something works for one creator, others copy it, which is why so many New York fashion influencers, for example, seem to have the same hair and live in similar buildings. It's the same trap brands fall into when they chase marketing trends. The editing has blurred too, with fast cuts and on-screen hooks built to grab your attention, no matter what the video is about.
Then there's the selling. Even when a post isn't a paid sponsorship, a linked product in every video makes the whole feed feel like an advert. If someone recommends one thing they love, you listen. If they recommend ten things a day, you start to suspect the affiliate commission is doing the talking. Most of us already see more adverts in a day than we could count; we don't need the people we chose to follow adding to the pile.
The behaviour is what turns fatigue into anger: influencers snapping at strangers who walk into their shot, or treating everyday life as a film set.
Even creators are distancing themselves from the label. In a recent episode of her podcast, Step by Step with Shelby Church, called "Why Everyone Is Tired of Influencers", the US YouTuber explains that she avoids calling herself an influencer and describes herself as someone who makes videos. The word, she suggests, has become shorthand for the narcissistic stereotype, even though plenty of creators don't fit it.
The research backs up the mood. YPulse's 2026 Celebrities and Influencers Report found that 62% of 13 to 39-year-olds are tired of seeing the same big names everywhere.
Are people sick of influencers, or of a certain kind of influencer?
The same research suggests people haven't stopped trusting creators. They've become pickier about which ones.
YPulse found that 58% of 13 to 39-year-olds trust online creators and influencers, up from 39% in 2022, and 73% trust smaller creators more than big influencers. Most (61%) have bought something an online personality recommended. The fatigue is aimed at the biggest, most interchangeable names, while trust shifts toward smaller, more specialist voices.
Brands in the UK are acting on it. Kolsquare, an influencer marketing platform, surveyed 1,123 marketing decision-makers across Europe for its 2026/2027 outlook, published this month. It found that 93% of UK brands and agencies expect to increase their influencer spend over the next year. Two years ago, the figure was 50%. Kolsquare's previous report found UK marketers were more likely than any others in Europe to work with micro-influencers, creators with between 10,000 and 100,000 followers.
So spending is rising at the same time as the eye-rolling, and both can be true at once. For a founder, the useful question is which creators your customers still trust. The encouraging news for small businesses is that they tend to be creators with a smaller, more focused following, which are also the ones you can afford.
What does a brand buy when it pays an influencer?
It buys association, and association works in both directions.
A sponsorship ties a brand to something its customers already care about, whether that's a football club or a local festival. A creator partnership does the same, except it ties you to a person, and you don't control their next post. Their values rub off on you, which is the point, and so do their mistakes. We've written before about why meaning builds more valuable brands than marketing does; a creator partnership is one of the fastest ways to show customers what you mean.
CoverGirl used association on purpose when it named James Charles as its first male brand ambassador in October 2016. He was a 17-year-old makeup artist with a few hundred thousand Instagram followers, and he fronted the brand's So Lashy mascara alongside Katy Perry. Choosing a young man to sell mascara said something about who CoverGirl thought makeup was for, and the announcement was covered widely. Back then, a brand making a social media creator the face of a campaign was news in itself. Ten years on, it's routine, so who you choose says more about your business than the fact that you work with creators at all.
Poppi learnt the other side of this in February 2025. Ahead of its Super Bowl advert that month, the US prebiotic soda brand sent branded vending machines to 32 influencers. Many people online hated it. They called it wasteful and out of touch, and asked why a brand would send free drinks to people who are already sent everything, when schools, hospitals or shelters could have had them. Co-founder Allison Ellsworth responded in a TikTok video on the brand's account, saying creator marketing had always been a staple of the brand, and invited people to nominate places like teachers' lounges for the machines instead.
What people objected to was the choice of recipients: an extravagant-looking giveaway for people who already had plenty. Poppi said the machines were on loan and would be returned, but the comments under Ellsworth's video suggest that didn't settle it for many people. They read that choice as a statement about what the brand valued. For a small business, the budget is smaller but the principle is the same. Whoever you gift or pay is a public signal about who your brand is for.
The partnerships that work tend to suit both sides. A brand makes content to grow a business; many creators make things because they love making them. Gymshark is one of the best UK examples. In 2012, Ben Francis was running the business from a garage on a tiny budget, so he sent kit to the fitness YouTubers he watched. As he later put it, it "just made sense to send them clothing to get honest opinions". They liked it, wore it on camera, and the relationships turned into formal partnerships as Gymshark became a billion-pound business. The creators got kit they wanted and a brand to grow alongside. It’s the perfect example of a win-win.
How should you choose an influencer to work with?
Start with the audience, and leave the follower count until last.
Check the numbers and the comments
Any creator worth paying can send screenshots of their audience insights: age, gender and, for a UK business, the share of their followers who live in the UK. A creator with 40,000 followers who are mostly in the US may do less for a Manchester boutique than one with 6,000 followers nearby. Ask for average views and saves on recent posts too, because follower counts on their own tell you very little. Then read the comments. Engagement rates can be inflated, but conversations are harder to fake, so look for real questions getting real answers rather than a wall of emojis.
Scroll back through their last month
Look at how they talk about other people and the places they film, and count how much of it is selling. If you can't find a post that isn't an advert, your product will be one more link in the pile, and their audience has already learnt to scroll past those. The same goes for creators selling through TikTok Shop, where their credibility is doing most of the work. If they'd embarrass you at an event, they'll embarrass you online. And if you do invite creators somewhere, take Gauff's point seriously and brief them on how to behave there.
Look for someone who'd use it anyway
The strongest partnerships are with people already talking about your category, or who are already customers. Their recommendation sounds like them because it is them.
Send product before a contract
Austin Price, social media director at US agency H/L, describes gifting as an audition. Instead of starting with a contract, brands send creators a PR box with no obligation to post, watch who creates something and whose content people respond to, then go deeper with the few who stood out. For a small business, a handful of well-chosen samples costs far less than a paid post and shows you who's worth paying. It's a different thing from Poppi's vending machines: a modest product sent to someone who fits, rather than an extravagant giveaway to people who already have everything. Any post about a gifted product still needs an ad label, as the UK rules below explain.
Think beyond one post
A single post rarely changes much. Kolsquare's 2025 research found 61% of UK marketers planned to put more into long-term influencer partnerships in 2026. Price makes a related point: when a creator's post works, brands cut it into adverts for other channels, because content that starts in a creator's voice tends to hold attention better than standard ad creative. If you might want to do that, agree usage rights in writing before the post goes live.
Decide what "worth it" looks like before you start
Sales are only one result, and often not the main one. A good partnership puts your business in front of the right people and says something about what you stand for, which is the association you're paying for. Before anything goes live, choose what you'll judge it on: new followers who look like your customers, enquiries that mention the creator, content you can reuse, or sales through a code or link that's unique to them. A few weeks after the post, look back and ask whether the right people noticed, and whether it was a better use of your time and budget than the next best thing on your list. If it wasn't, that's useful to know too.
Before you sign anything, answer these five questions:
Would my ideal customer follow this person?
Where does their audience live, and can they show me?
Would they recommend my product if I weren't paying them?
What else have they promoted in the past month?
If they became the story tomorrow, would I be comfortable with my name next to theirs?
What are the UK rules for working with influencers?
If you pay for it or gift it, it's an advert, and your business shares responsibility for labelling it.
Under guidance from the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) and the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), content made in return for payment, free products, commission or any other commercial relationship must be clearly labelled as advertising. The clearest label is "Ad", placed upfront rather than buried at the end of a string of hashtags. Words like "gifted" or "collab" on their own don't count. Getting disclosure wrong can catch up with even the biggest names: Gymshark, which built its business on creators, faces a proposed class action in the US alleging it failed to disclose influencer partnerships.
The brand is responsible alongside the creator, even if you had no hand in the post. The rules cover gifts too: if a creator posts about something you sent them, it needs an ad label even if there was no obligation to post. Since 6 April 2025, the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 has allowed the CMA to fine businesses directly for hidden advertising, up to 10% of global turnover. Put the disclosure requirement in writing before any content goes live, and read the CMA's guidance on social media endorsements before your first campaign.
Tax is worth a thought too. HMRC's view is that products sent to influencers in return for promotion aren't simple business gifts but a form of payment for advertising, even without a formal contract, and that changes how VAT applies. If you're planning a gifting campaign, mention it to your accountant before the boxes go out.
This section is general information, not legal advice. If you're unsure whether a partnership needs labelling, speak to a solicitor.
So, should you work with influencers if people are sick of them?
Yes, if you choose the person as carefully as you'd choose a business partner.
The fatigue is real, but it's aimed at a type: the creator who'd promote anything to anyone, from a life nobody recognises. The creators people still trust tend to teach them something, whether that's how to invest or what to wear to a job interview. Many of them are within a small business budget.
The deeper reason to choose carefully is that a partnership says something about you. Customers will judge your business by who you pay to speak for it, the same way they judged Poppi by who it chose to send its machines to. Pick someone whose audience you'd be proud to be trusted by, and whose behaviour you'd defend in public. That's worth more than reach.