Between Autonomy and Control: Influencer-Marketers Relations and Campaign Development

Social media influencers have complex advertising functions as content creators and managers of their social media channels. The present research investigates the interaction processes between marketers and social media influencers during the advertising campaign’s development within the principal-agent theory’s theoretical framework. This study contributes to the research on managing strategic influencer communication by extending existing knowledge with insights from influencers’ perspectives. Our method consisted of in-depth interviews with seventeen social media influencers from a European country, which were thematically analyzed. Respondents evaluated marketers’ simple, bureaucratic, and conservative control through long-term relationships with brands and influencers’ perspectives of the relevance of influencer-brad fit. Results unveiled influencers’ efforts to maintain creative autonomy, foster positive audience reception, and align with the brand’s overarching advertising objectives.