Scaling Influence: From Tactical Channel to Strategic Discipline

August, 2026.- Influencer marketing is having a moment right now. Emma Roffey and Natalie Stagnaro of Coolr see a fundamental shift: influencer marketing has become a true full-funnel channel that can drive real awareness, consideration, and conversion. It is no longer viewed as a nice-to-have—it is a boardroom conversation and increasingly a core part of brands’ media strategies.

In this interview, Roffey and Stagnaro discuss the most important lesson about scaling influencer marketing: scaling is not about doing more of the same, it is about constantly evolving. To keep pace, everything has to evolve together—team, technology, measurement framework, and the way value is demonstrated. If one part lags behind, the whole model starts to wobble.

Stagnaro, who has been at the forefront of influencer marketing for over 13 years, notes that the biggest shift is that brands are now approaching creators as strategic partners. However, some brands still struggle to let go of the reins. When brands over-script or over-control creators instead of treating them as creative partners, you can see it in the output. It feels less authentic, and ultimately it does not perform as well.

Roffey, who joined Coolr in 2024 and was promoted to Head of Influencer in under two years, emphasizes the importance of nurturing talent and creating space for different voices to shape the work. The brands producing the most exciting influencer work are the ones willing to take calculated creative risks—often making unexpected creator partnerships that create genuine cultural cut-through.

Natalie Stagnaro answers

From Dentsu/Gleam to Fanbytes/Brainlabs to Coolr: You’ve helped build creator marketing capabilities across multiple agencies. What’s the most important lesson about scaling influencer marketing that you’ve learned across these different environments?

The biggest lesson has been that scaling isn’t about doing more of the same, it’s about constantly evolving. When I started in influencer marketing, we were still figuring out what good looked like. Measurement was relatively immature and much of the industry was learning as it went.

Today, influencer marketing has  become a true full-funnel channel that can drive real awareness, consideration and conversion. To keep pace, everything has to evolve together, your team, your technology, your measurement framework and the way you demonstrate value. If one part lags behind, the whole model starts to wobble. 

You’re focused on deepening senior client relationships. What’s the one question you ask a CMO in the first meeting that changes how they think about influencer’s role in their marketing mix?

I always strip the conversation right back. Rather than starting with platforms, creators or content, I want to know what the business is actually trying to achieve. What’s the wider challenge they’re trying to solve?

One question I often ask is, “How do we make you famous internally?” It completely reframes the conversation. Suddenly influencer marketing isn’t a bolt-on channel, it’s a strategic tool that can help deliver against the commercial metrics a CMO is ultimately being judged on.

Once clients see that creators can solve real business problems rather than simply generate content, the conversation shifts away from tactics and towards strategy. That’s where influencer marketing creates the greatest value.

You’ve been at the forefront of influencer marketing for over 13 years. What’s the biggest shift you’ve seen in how brands approach creators compared to five years ago and what’s stayed frustratingly the same?

The biggest shift is that influencer marketing has become a mainstream marketing discipline. It’s no longer viewed as a nice-to-have, it’s a boardroom conversation and increasingly a core part of brands’ media strategies.

You only have to look at companies like Unilever, which has committed a significant proportion of its advertising investment to social and creator marketing. When businesses of that scale make moves like that, it tells you everything about where the industry is heading.

What’s frustratingly stayed the same is that some brands still struggle to let go of the reins. I’m a huge believer in giving creators the freedom to tell a brand’s story in their own voice. That’s why audiences follow them in the first place.

When brands over-script or over-control creators instead of treating them as creative partners, you can see it in the output. It feels less authentic, and ultimately it doesn’t perform as well.

You’ve worked at both network agencies (Dentsu) and independents (Fanbytes/Brainlabs, Influencer). What’s the advantage of building an influencer practice inside an independent social agency like Coolr compared to a network?

I’ve genuinely loved working across both network agencies and independents because they each have real strengths. What excites me about Coolr is the agility. We can move quickly, make decisions faster and see the impact almost immediately.

There’s also a real passion across the agency. Everyone genuinely cares about the work and about building something special, and that energy translates into the output. It creates an environment where creativity thrives because there are fewer barriers between ideas and execution.

That combination of speed, creativity and collaboration is what makes Coolr such a great agency to keep building and evolving the influencer offering. 

You said you want to “push the creative even further for clients.” Where is influencer creative still playing it safe, and what would it take to push it to the next level?

The brands producing the most exciting influencer work are the ones willing to take calculated creative risks. Often that means making unexpected creator partnerships that don’t necessarily make sense on paper but create genuine cultural cut-through.

One of my favourite recent examples was Martha Stewart partnering with beverage brand Liquid Death. It was unexpected, slightly chaotic and impossible to ignore which is exactly why it worked.

I’m not suggesting brands should throw caution to the wind, but the strongest work usually comes when they’re prepared to be a little braver with who they partner with and how they brief creators. Give creators more trust, more freedom and a bigger role in shaping the idea, and the content becomes more authentic, more memorable and ultimately delivers stronger performance.

Emma Roffey answers 

You joined Coolr in 2024 and have been promoted to Head of Influencer in under two years. What’s the biggest shift in your responsibilities, and what have you learned about leadership that you didn’t know as a strategist?

As an Influencer Strategist, I was already focused on bringing Coolr’s point of view on influencer marketing to clients and embedding our influencer offering into strategic responses. Moving into this role, I get to be much closer to the execution too, making sure that strategic thinking runs through everything we do, not just the big moments. It’s also been such a period of growth for our team at Coolr, so getting to grow the team and nurture the talent we have is a major part of the role, and one I really love doing.

On leadership, I’ve learned strategy and activation don’t have to feel so separate. Everyone can be strategic, and that’s reflective in the work the team is doing. But leadership is also knowing things don’t start and end with your own specialty. We’ve doubled the team in the last six months, which means we now have an incredible mix of specialists with different passions and perspectives. Leadership is about creating the space for those voices to shape the work, because that’s what ultimately makes us stronger. 

You’ve led influencer campaigns for a diverse set of clients (Compare the Market, Deliveroo, John Lewis, Müller, Starling Bank). Which of these was the hardest to integrate influencer into their marketing mix, and what made it finally click?

I wouldn’t say any one client has been harder than another because influencer marketing is surprisingly adaptable across sectors. The challenge is never questioning if influencer fits, it’s how it fits. Every client has different objectives. A campaign designed to shift brand perception requires a completely different creator strategy from one that’s educating consumers or driving conversion. The real skill is making it work around the business objective rather than trying to force the same formula every time. 

You said “influencer marketing is having such a moment right now.” What’s different about this moment compared to the previous waves of influencer hype, and what makes it sustainable this time?

The ground has been shifting for a while now, and that comes down to a few things. Influencer is catching up when it comes to measurement, we’re accountable not just for brand metrics but commercial outcomes too, which naturally means it’s coming closer to core strategy rather than being treated as an extension of social or PR. It’s becoming embedded in how brands think rather than something they react to when it trends. 

The industry has also matured, the processes and standards behind the work are so much stronger than they used to be. What’s going to keep it sustainable is fostering true co-ownership with our creator partners.

You’ve been instrumental in building Coolr’s influencer offering. What’s the most important structural or process change you’ve made that has had the biggest impact on campaign delivery?

This is probably the strategist in me talking, but it’s definitely the way we report. How we analyse performance at the end of a campaign, or the end of a quarter, is just as important as the work that went into it. We’ve built new reporting processes that the team has really embraced, and the insights and learnings we’re now able to give clients off the back of it are so valuable.

As Head of Influencer, you’re now responsible for scaling the practice. What’s the biggest risk to quality as you scale, and how are you protecting it?

A big part of what makes our influencer work at Coolr successful is that everything is truly bespoke to the brief. We work closely with strategy, creative and our client teams on our responses, and each one gets its own approach, especially when it comes to talent selection. Our creator partners are so important to us, but every suggestion we put forward comes back to the brief, the creative and the strategy, rather than trying to reverse engineer people into a campaign. As we take on more work, we’re deliberate about protecting that same level of diligence on every brief. It’s so important to the work we do that it stays non-negotiable, and we invest in those standards to scale with the team as we grow.