South African branded content has a problem. And before anyone gets defensive, let’s be clear: it’s not the creators. It’s never been the creators.
If you’ve spent any time on Instagram or TikTok lately, especially in the beauty, fashion, gaming, or tech spaces, you’ve probably noticed it. A wave of beautifully shot, impeccably lit, completely soulless content. An influencer holding a product, reciting what sounds suspiciously like the back of the box, telling you it comes in these colours, works with this device, and is available now on Takealot. It gives Verimark ad. Hard sell, circa 2003. And not in a fun, nostalgic way.
The Brief Is Broken
Here’s what’s actually happening behind the scenes: a creator with a genuine audience, a distinct voice, and years of community-building gets handed a brief by an agency. That brief tells them exactly what to say, how to shoot it, and what the content should look like. The result? Content that sounds nothing like them. And then somehow, inexplicably, that same brief goes out to every other creator in that niche. At the same time. So your audience opens their feed and gets served the same unboxing, five times in a row, from five different people, all shot the same way, all saying the same thing. I experienced this firsthand with a controller campaign. The content was genuinely gorgeous, no shade to anyone involved in the execution. But the brief had clearly been copy-pasted across the board. There was no individuality, no variety and no reason for anyone to watch more than the first two seconds before scrolling past.
Agencies Have Forgotten Why This Works
Influencer marketing wasn’t built on polished perfection. It worked because it was authentic: a real person, with a real opinion, speaking to a community that actually trusted them. That’s the whole value exchange. The moment you strip out the creator’s voice and replace it with brand-approved messaging, you’ve lost the one thing that made the format worth investing in. You’ve just made a TV ad with a smaller budget and a tighter turnaround. And when the campaign underperforms, because of course it does, who takes the blame? Not the brief. Not the agency. The creator. I’ve been removed from campaigns for pushing back on briefs I didn’t believe in. There was an Xbox campaign that wanted something along the lines of budget cosplay. I came back and said, honestly, that doesn’t work for me. I was off the campaign by the end of the day. No conversation, no compromise, just gone. That’s the industry right now.
What Needs to Change
When I’m brought onto a campaign, I don’t ask who else is on it so I can match them. I ask so I can make sure we’re not doing the same thing. I want to post at a different time. I want a different angle, a different format, a different story. Because that’s what actually serves the brand and the audience. Creators need to be given the brief’s objective, not its execution. Tell me what you want people to feel, do, or know. Then let me figure out how to communicate that to my community, in my voice, in a way that actually lands. And agencies need to stop releasing everyone’s content on the same day. It cannibalises the reach, exhausts the audience, and makes even the most legitimate content feel like a coordinated ad drop, which, well, it is. Audiences aren’t stupid. The moment they see “paid partnership” combined with content that sounds nothing like the creator they followed, they’re gone. They scroll. And soon enough, they stop trusting that creator altogether which hurts everyone long-term.
Trust the creators you hire. Give them the goal and get out of the way. Stagger the content. Let different voices tell different stories about the same product. That’s how you build genuine reach, not just the illusion of it. The talent is here. The audiences are here. The only thing getting in the way is a briefing process that was designed for billboards, not bedrooms.
These thoughts started at the gym and ended up on TikTok:
@techgirlzaI think South African content creators have a problem and I don’t know how to fix it.
