When Marketing Becomes Dependent on Someone Else’s Reputation
I am older than YouTube. I'm not entirely sure how I feel about writing that sentence.
The upside is that I've had a front-row seat to the evolution of online creators. I remember when some now-enormous YouTube channels were people making awkward videos in their bedrooms, before “creator” became a career path and before every other video seemed to begin with a message from today's sponsor.
I've watched creators grow up, build companies, sell companies, disappear and reinvent themselves. I've also stopped watching most of them because I can't stand their content anymore or the face of the channel is no longer present. One of the exceptions is Ray Narvaez Jr.
Who Actually Owns the Audience?
I started watching Ray when he was part of Achievement Hunter. When he left in 2015 to pursue streaming independently, I followed him.
That distinction has become more interesting to me with time. Achievement Hunter provided the platform where I discovered Ray. Rooster Teeth had the audience, production infrastructure and distribution that initially put him on my screen. Eventually, though, I wasn't watching because of the company. I was watching because I liked Ray.
Today, I still occasionally watch his gameplay videos, especially when he plays co-op or competitive games with other creators. There tends to be uncensored language so I can't watch it when my son is home since he is in a mimic phase and I would rather not get a note from his daycare. Ray and his wife Tina have built a business around his content and merchandise, and his audience followed him well beyond the company where many of us first discovered him.
Meanwhile, Achievement Hunter ended in 2023. Rooster Teeth, after years of acquisitions and eventually becoming part of Warner Bros. Discovery, was shut down in 2024.
The corporate platform disappeared. The relationship Ray built with his audience didn't. That's an important distinction whenever a company talks about “our audience.” A company can create the platform where someone becomes known. It can own the channel, equipment, intellectual property and distribution. It doesn't necessarily own the relationship viewers develop with the person on the screen.
Creator Marketing Trust Isn't Media Inventory
Monday, I wrote about Commander Shepard wandering around the Citadel declaring multiple businesses their “favorite store.” It's funny because we immediately understand the problem. If everyone is your favorite, your recommendation doesn't mean very much.
The brand side of that relationship is just as interesting. Marketing departments spend enormous amounts of time protecting brands. Which logo can we use? Is that the correct color? Did we use the approved product name? Does this copy match our messaging?
Then affiliate marketing comes along and essentially says: “Great. Now give part of your reputation to someone you don't employ.” Um. Maybe we should have a few more questions.
Because when a creator recommends your product, you're not simply buying access to their followers. You're borrowing some of the trust they've already built with those people.
Do They Actually Like This?
Ray is particularly selective about sponsorships and what he promotes to his audience because he doesn't depend on it as a revenue stream. That matters to me as a viewer. When he does promote something, my reaction is closer to: “Huh. He agreed to promote this.”
That doesn't mean I immediately buy it. It means years of watching him have taught me something about how seriously I should take the recommendation.
I have the opposite reaction when I suddenly see the same product appearing across several YouTube channels I watch. Creators like Evan and Katelyn or Legal Eagle might introduce me to something interesting, but the marketer in my brain immediately starts asking questions.
Do they actually like this?
Would they be talking about it without the sponsorship?
How much of what I'm hearing comes from them, and how much came from the campaign brief?
To be clear, getting paid doesn't mean someone doesn't genuinely like the product. Both things can be true. That's what makes affiliate marketing trust complicated.
We've Seen What Happens When That Relationship Isn't Clear
Fyre Festival gave us one of the most spectacular examples of what can happen when the relationship between promotion and compensation isn't obvious to the audience. Influencers and celebrities helped generate enormous attention for the festival, and questions about paid endorsements and disclosure became part of the fallout.
The lesson isn't that paid recommendations are inherently dishonest. The lesson is that audiences deserve to understand the relationship behind the recommendation. Trust doesn't require a recommendation to be unpaid. It requires the relationship behind it to be understandable.
Reach and Trust Aren't the Same Metric
Imagine two potential creators.
Creator A has 500,000 followers and promotes a different product every few days.
Creator B has 50,000 followers and rarely accepts sponsorships.
Who has more influence?
The spreadsheet probably starts with Creator A. More followers. More potential impressions. Bigger reach. Except there's another question that doesn't fit as neatly into that column: What happens when each person says, “I actually recommend this”?
Creator B's smaller audience might pay considerably more attention precisely because the recommendation is unusual. That doesn't automatically make the smaller creator the better choice. Reach matters. Audience fit matters. Engagement matters. Cost and conversion matter.
Trust matters, and trust doesn't necessarily scale at the same rate as follower count.
The Brand Is Making an Endorsement Too
There's another side of this creator marketing trust relationship that marketers shouldn't overlook. When a creator recommends a brand, they're lending the brand some of their credibility. When a brand hires a creator, the brand is making an endorsement too. You're saying you're comfortable having this person represent your product to the audience they've built.
So before looking only at follower counts and engagement rates, I'd want to know more. What else do they promote? How do they interact with their audience? Does our product make sense coming from them? Would their audience believe they actually use it?
And perhaps most importantly: Would we still want our logo next to this person's name if they weren't bringing us thousands of impressions?
That's a harder question that is worth asking.
The Story Behind the Strategy
Affiliate marketing looks wonderfully measurable. Here's the link. Here's the code. Here are the clicks and conversions. Here's what we paid. Here's what we earned.
The most important part of the transaction may be the thing that's hardest to fit into the dashboard: trust. A creator can spend years earning it one video, stream, post or interaction at a time. A brand gets to borrow a little of that trust when the creator tells their audience, “I think this is worth your attention.”
That recommendation means something because they don't give it to everyone. So before asking: “How many people can this creator reach?” I'd add: “How much does their recommendation mean when it reaches them?”
When marketing becomes dependent on someone else's reputation, you're not just choosing a distribution channel. You're choosing whose credibility you want standing next to yours.
