Authenticity at Scale: Why Real Voices Drive Real Results
By: Meg Dorrans and Tee Buxton
In an age where authenticity has become the ultimate buzzword, the next generation of creative communication agencies are loosening their grip on transactional, coercive partnerships – instead co-creating with real voices that have genuine brand affinity to drive deeper influence.
At Gung Ho, we’ve deepened our commitment to our creator community - inviting creators onto projects to co-develop creative concepts that shape campaign strategy, as well as simultaneously aligning our brands to support the personal projects, communities and business of our creator network to build long-term brand advocacy.
Our influencer partnerships therefore go beyond a simple transaction; they are rooted in authenticity, engagement and compelling storytelling that resonate with a broad range of communities. Successful collaborations built on trust and shared values enable us to deliver strong audience engagement, effective brand alignment and measurable ROI for the brands we represent.
Why are influencer partnerships important?
Creators are consultants of their own audiences, platforms and content – and can subsequently deliver brand storytelling with a level of trust and rawness that traditional advertising simply cannot replicate in today’s digitally native world.
The most impactful partnerships leverage storytelling to create an emotional resonance – increasing engagement and interactions between creators and their audiences, ultimately unlocking stronger ROI. Beyond conversion, a trusted voice with authentic brand affinity can tangibly enhance brand salience, cultivate advocacy and even intersect communities where engagement is high, and brand love can become infectious.
The right creators place brands at the centre of real-time, peer-to-peer conversations. This alignment can drive results across marketing funnel – from awareness and consideration to conversions. When brands lean into meaningful, longer-term partnerships rather than one-off transactions, they unlock something more powerful: true brand advocacy.
Photo by @jwarnockk in partnership with New Balance
What should brands look for in partnerships, and how is Gung Ho unique in delivering this service?
Central to the Gung Ho partnerships strategy is to identify creators with a clear niche, who are experts in their own audiences and have a desire to genuinely co-create. The value of these creators is further compounded when the creators have credible brand affinity at an organic level and align with our in-house performance benchmarks.
On a deeper level, our team of influencer experts are talented at co-creating partnerships that genuinely transcend transaction – with the sole objective of fostering long-term brand advocacy by leveraging unique opportunities that maximise storytelling and demonstrate brand-creator relationships with genuine depth.
Every partnership follows a structured cycle that begins with setting a clear objective - awareness, engagement or conversion. We carefully refine target audiences and platform presence to discover profiles who best align with campaign requirements. Each creator is then assessed through our Gung Ho creator framework to analyse their authenticity, audience demographics, content quality and performance benchmarks before selection.
“Our creative collaborations are a true creative exchange. Whilst we provide strategic creative briefs, we never dictate creative direction to ensure our influencers maintain full ownership of their content and are empowered to craft genuine storytelling that resonates with their audience.”
– Tee Buxton, Senior Partnerships & Community Manager
Gung Ho sets itself apart with a bespoke, data-driven approach to influencer marketing. Our track record proves that experience-led storytelling is often the catalyst to heightened performance in a saturated social media landscape, ultimately driving exponential engagement and impressive ROI.
Take our recent collaboration with New Balance. To position the 1080v14 as an everyday running trainer, we partnered with three creators with repeat organic brand advocacy to authentically integrate the shoe into their rotation. Their story to the New York Marathon was documented from take-off to touchdown – achieving over 2 million organic impressions and an impressive +1000% ROI.
“At Gung Ho, influencers are far from just a fad – they are at the core of how we build brands.”
– Meg Dorrans, Partnerships & Activations Director
When executed well, influencer partnerships are a powerful, proven way to drive real brand uplift, spark authentic conversations and build social advocacy.
The key is knowing how to co-collaborate with purpose, and that’s where we come in. Our partnerships team is uniquely positioned to understand the creator economy, tapping into influencer in its most powerful form: authentic, community-driven and culturally relevant.
To learn more about influencer partnership opportunities with Gung Ho, contact our partnerships team here.