Nobody actually has a creator team (and Delta just scrolls TikTok)

Ok, I need to tell you about two things I read this week, because together they kind of made my month.

One is a big industry report. The other is an interview with someone at Delta about leaving comments on TikTok. They have nothing to do with each other, and they're basically saying the same thing.

Wait, how many people?

CreatorIQ puts out a State of Creator Marketing report every year (this is the seventh, published 30 September). The number everyone's sharing is that an average of 36 people now contribute to creator marketing at brands, and 41 at agencies.

Thirty-six! My first reaction was, cool, so I'm only 35 people short 🫠

Then I kept reading.

Both of these numbers are from the same page, which is sort of the whole story (source: CreatorIQ, State of Creator Marketing 2026-2027)

Turns out those 36 people mostly aren't on a creator team. CreatorIQ asked which team has primary ownership of creator marketing, and brand marketing came first (20% of brands), then social (16%), then paid or performance marketing (15%). Dedicated creator marketing teams came fourth, at just 13% of brands.

Even CreatorIQ says it in the report:

Straight from the report, the second paragraph is the bit nobody's quoting (source: CreatorIQ, State of Creator Marketing 2026-2027)

So most big brands don't have a creator team either. They have a crowd of people each doing a slice of it in between their actual jobs (which, honestly, sounds exhausting to coordinate).

Ok, fair wobble here, because I don't want to cherry-pick. The brands reporting 5x returns have even MORE people involved (48 on average, versus 31 at brands making roughly what they spent). They also put 66% of their whole marketing budget into creators. Bigger programs, bigger results. I'm not going to pretend that isn't in there.

But that feels like a budget conversation to me, not a reason to wait until you've got a team.

Meanwhile, at Delta

Rachel Karten (if you don't read Link in Bio yet, fix that) interviewed Jaz Daley, Social Media Community Specialist at Delta Air Lines, on 1 October. It's my favorite thing I've read in weeks.

Short version: back in April, The X for Boys, an Albany organization that teaches young boys life skills, posted a TikTok about how to get around an airport. It went viral. Delta left a nice comment. Then they reached out, put together a whole day at Delta HQ for the kids (747s, emergency evacuations, the works) and surprised the team with a $10,000 donation. The videos from that day have hundreds of thousands of views.

Karten's line about it is so good: "A viral video is chapter one of a story. The best brands help write chapter two."

Then she asks the question I always want answered:

No software name-drop anywhere in that answer (source: Rachel Karten, Link in Bio)

I had to read that twice.

Free, all of it. Well, apart from the flights (source: Link in Bio, interview with Delta's Jaz Daley)

One of the biggest airlines in the world, and the social listening setup is people scrolling their For You page and typing keywords into the search bar. They do keep a tracker of every engagement (the story, how people reacted, how the creator responded), and Jaz gives a lot of credit to leadership for trusting the team to move fast.

The best brand moment I've seen this year came from one person paying attention, with a boss who let her act on it.

My whole team is me, at a desk squeezed between my bed and my closet. So I'm very much reading all this as permission (and I'd like you to as well).

Here's what I'd actually try this week:

1. Scroll on purpose. Ten minutes a day in your tags, mentions and FYP, looking for people already talking about your thing or your category. Not to reply to everything. Just to notice.
2. Search like a customer would. Type your product, your category and the problem you solve into TikTok and Instagram search. Delta does exactly this, for free.
3. A tracker, nothing fancy. A spreadsheet is fine (literally a spreadsheet). Who you replied to, what their story was, what happened next.
4. Pick one chapter two a month. One person or creator you do something real for. It doesn't need to be $10,000! A product, a proper shoutout, a handwritten note, an invite.
5. Decide your yes in advance. Delta can move fast because leadership already trusts the team. If you run a small business, you probably ARE the leadership, which is low key your superpower here.

Save this one. Or don't, and just do number one today

I'm not saying reports like CreatorIQ's are useless. I find them super interesting, and if you're pitching creator budget to a boss, the ROI data in there is great ammo. I just think "36 people" lands on a lot of small business owners as this isn't for me.

It is for you, though. Delta's version started with a comment.

Now over to you.

Who's already talking about your brand that you haven't noticed yet? What would chapter two look like for one of them? And be honest, have you been putting off creator stuff because it feels like it needs a team? 😅

Rosa x

p.s. if you try the scroll-on-purpose thing, I'd love to hear how it goes. Come tell me over on LinkedIn.