Unilever Just Moved Half it’s Budget to Creators

Unilever, one of the largest consumer goods companies on the planet, has allocated $4.7 Billion towards creator-led marketing.

CEO Fernando Fernandez disclosed that the company has scaled its creator partnerships from 10,000 to 300,000 within the last 2 years.

The CEO’s framing: “There are 19,000 zip codes in India, there are 5,764 municipalities in Brazil. I want one influencer in each of them.”

This seems like a massive win for the creator economy as a whole. However, the influx of partnerships between creators and multinational enterprises like Unilever has contributed to a decline in average spend per collaboration from $214 in 2024 to $202 in 2025. 

The biggest names are getting bigger. But the oversaturation of the middle market is leading to the average creator being worse off. 

Why? 

Unilever may be partnering with more people. But they’re giving the biggest deals to the creators they can actually trust.

Unilever has announced a philosophy that it hasn’t built the infrastructure to support. 

The amount of money spent on influencers signifies the level of trust that Unilever has in the creator economy. But with 300k partnerships, how are they supposed to vet and legitimize every single person they work with? 

What separates you amongst others to a company like Unilever isn’t your ability to follow the algorithm. It’s being the easiest to say yes to, that means being the most specific, the most legible, the most trusted.

Fortune 500 companies are only rewarding the creators they know will deliver.