The rules for influencer marketing are constantly being rewritten.
Whether it’s never-ending platform changes (thanks a lot, Zuckaberg) or cultural trends and signals that become irrelevant almost as fast as they go viral, staying ahead of the game has basically become a professional sport.
And in this beautiful game, the amateurs scroll – while the pros strategise and execute the bold ideas shaping the industry faster than your TikTok algorithm curates your FYP.
So if you’re ready to play with the pros, here are the top 2 influencer trends you’ll need to keep in your arsenal to stay ahead in 2026:
Semi-scripted Episodic Content
When it comes to influencer content, you’re not just competing with your direct competitors in the safe ad break anymore. You’re up against skit creators, meme makers, celebrities and reaction videos to the latest episode of a viral Netflix series. It’s content and media houses that rack up millions of views. They’re the real competition for captive eyeballs.
So with attention harder to earn than ever, the brands breaking through are adopting an entertainment-first mindset to their influencer collaborations and campaigns. To unpack this shift, brand tracking platform Tracksuit partnered with creative agency Small World to produce the Entertain or Die report – a deep dive into how if you’re not entertaining as a brand, you may as well not exist.
The first-of-its-kind research ranked 100 of the biggest and best brands in the world purely on entertainment value. 29 of the top 30 had revenue growth last year. Two-thirds of them had double-digit growth.
One of the most compelling ways brands are building this mindset into their influencer strategies is through semi-scripted episodic content. Rather than manufacture an “authentic” (sorry, we must ban that word) product review, they create TV series-style video content that feels more binge-worthy than a branded ad.
A key innovator experimenting with this format (with great success) is InStyle.
Their social-first mockumentary series “The Intern” transforms the typical influencer‑campaign playbook. Each episode follows misfit interns, played by influencers and creators, navigating the high‑stakes (and hilariously chaotic) world of fashion publishing. From failing to print a single moodboard to crashing runway events, it blends influencer creativity, office satire and episodic storytelling to engage younger audiences in a way that feels less like marketing and more like entertainment, strategically rejuvenating a legacy magazine for a new generation.
The takeaway lesson? Loosen that grip on the brand bible and ask yourself if that over-engineered product review #ad, ticking every single USP, is actually content anyone would bother watching. It’s time to bridge the divide between the work you applaud and the work you greenlight.
Unexpected Characters
With so much profile data at our fingertips, it’s easy to fall into the trap of over-engineering influencer casting – defaulting to the obvious, data-backed choices instead of embracing the underdog talents who are actually dominating our FYP feeds.
Imagine you’re a beauty brand launching a new lip gloss. Your immediate thinking may be to partner with some of the top beauty influencers who have metrics that perfectly align with the demographics from your latest audience research.
Sure, seems like a solid strategy. But in reality, it will probably deliver moderate results and then vanish into the endless scroll of BeautyTok by the next day.
The brands truly pushing the needle are the ones spotting rising talent beyond their niche early on – and leveraging them to tell their brand story in fresh, unexpected ways that still connect with their target audience.
We recently put this into action at Charlie Oscar with itsu.
Collaborating with untapped talent, Michael and Teresa (@makemeanoffer), to craft an unexpected partnership that broke the mould of traditional noodle cup advertising.
Noodle cups are traditionally aimed at students looking for a cheap dinner or snack. An amateur approach would be to partner with creators who fit this exact profile to create videos of incorporating the noodle cup into their everyday lives.
But to take our approach to pro-level, we clocked that a quintessential elderly British couple who have been married for 60 years were taking over FYP pages and winning the hearts of UK audiences with snippets of their daily lives.
Putting the noodle cups into their hands was an unexpected move for itsu, but ultimately resulted in hilariously heartwarming content, garnering over 1.5M views and overwhelmingly positive engagement from their audience (who actually sit between 20-30 years old – our target demo).
The takeaway? Think outside the box and take a bet on unexpected talent to create content that dominates the algorithm rather than disappears in it.
The brands that win influencer marketing in 2026 will be the ones who dare to entertain boldly and embrace the unexpected. It’s time to step up, think bigger, and play the game like a true pro.
