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Creator marketing has become an importantpart of brands’ strategies, but the creator should not be the strategy.
Dailymotion’s ongoing partnership with L’OREspresso shows an audience-first approach: start with the behavior or businessobjective, then determine the role creators should play and how their influencecan extend across the wider media journey.
Two campaigns illustrate that difference.Staying Awake tapped into an existing behavior among French football fansstaying up late to watch major matches. Coconut Iced had a different challenge:introduce a new product and make a new coffee ritual desirable. Together, theyshow why there is no single creator playbook.
From creator heritage to connected influence
Creators are not new to Dailymotion. Thecompany has been part of online creator culture since MotionMakers in 2005,with that heritage continuing through Mojo and Motion today.
The opportunity now is to connect creatorinfluence with the wider video journey. Consumers move between creators, socialplatforms, publishers, online video, streaming and connected TV. Motion,Dailymotion Business’s creator marketing solution, is built around thatreality, helping brands use creators as part of a broader video strategy andallowing strong ideas and creator content to travel beyond social into premiummedia environments.
The principle is simple: start with theaudience. Understand who you are trying to reach, the behavior you want to tapinto or change, and the job the brand needs to accomplish. Only then decidewhat role creators should play and how the idea should travel across media.
RAY, Dailymotion’s intelligence layer,supports that broader direction by helping turn audience signals intounderstanding and action across the video ecosystem. RAY was not used togenerate the insights behind these specific L’OR activations, but it representsthe broader Dailymotion Business ambition to connect audience understanding,creative decisions, activation and outcomes more closely.
The L’OR partnership: turning positioning intoparticipation
Dailymotion Business has helped JDE Peet’sbring L’OR closer to cultural moments that matter, using creator-ledexperiences to turn brand positioning into something audiences can activelyparticipate in.
For the summer football tournament, Motionby Dailymotion developed “Staying Awake,” a platform designed around a simpleaudience truth: football fans staying up late to watch the matches. Theactivation brought together content creators, an iconic figure from Frenchfootball, social storytelling, a live watch party and experiential momentscentered around cold coffee.
The result was a culturally relevantcampaign that gave L’OR a natural role within the football occasion andpositioned the brand as a new ritual for late-night match viewing.
Turning an audience behavior into a cultural moment
Staying Awake, 2026
Some of the summer’s biggest matches weretaking place late at night in France, creating a simple tension for supporters:before they could watch the action, they first had to stay awake for kick-off.
Rather than beginning with the creator orthe scale of the football occasion itself, the campaign started with thatbehavior. It gave L’OR a genuine role in the viewing experience, buildingaround a moment where coffee already made sense.
Fans selected the match they did not wantto miss through a dedicated platform and could receive a pre-match call fromFrench football legend Djibril Cissé. For selected participants, creator Darkojoined the call to reveal they had won an exclusive L’OR Espresso kit.
Eight creators introduced the platform totheir communities. The idea then moved into the physical world at the Parc desPrinces, where Darko and more than 20 creators gathered for a private Francevs. Norway watch party and shared the experience with their audiences.
Each element had a different job againstthe same audience behavior. The platform created participation. Creatorsbrought the idea into their communities. The physical experience gave thosecreators something worth sharing. One audience insight provided the threadconnecting the activation.
With no paid media amplification, more than40 pieces of content generated over 2 million organic video views, 94,000interactions and reached 1.4 million people.
Here, creators were not the strategy. Theirrole was to make a culturally relevant idea travel further and feel crediblewithin the communities already living that behavior.
Using creators to build a new product ritual
Coconut Iced, 2025
Coconut Iced asked creators to do adifferent job. L’OR was introducing a new flavor and a new way of drinkingcoffee to an urban, trend-conscious 25+ audience interested in coffee, music,festivals, going out and summer.
Rather than tapping into an establishedritual, the campaign needed to help create one. Creators had to introduce theproduct, demonstrate how it could be enjoyed and make a new way of drinkingcoffee feel natural and relevant to their communities.
Eight lifestyle creators produced 43 piecesof content. They worked within clear product mandatories while retainingfreedom over their creative approach, balancing brand consistency with contentthat felt authentic to their audiences.
Crucially, the strategy did not stop at thecreators’ feeds. Selected creator content extended into sponsored Meta Reelsand enriched online video, allowing the creative idea to travel beyond organicsocial and into a broader media journey.
The creator work generated 345K reach, 572Kviews, 11K interactions and a 3.25% average engagement rate. The wider campaigndelivered approximately 3.5 million VOL impressions and 9 million Instagramimpressions.
Brand Lift Study results also showed theenvironments playing different roles. Enriched online video was perceived asmore informative, while Instagram was perceived as more creative, with creatorauthenticity highlighted in the reporting.
Here, creators helped make something newfeel familiar. The content created relevance within their communities, whileamplification across additional video environments helped reinforce the productstory beyond social.
The creator is not the strategy
The two campaigns look different becausethe objectives were different. Staying Awake used creators to amplify abehavior that already existed and turn it into participation. Coconut Iced usedthem to demonstrate and normalize something new, with selected creator contentthen extending beyond organic social into paid media.
That distinction matters. Too often,creator marketing begins with a question like: Which influencer should we workwith?
A stronger starting point is: Who are wetrying to reach, what are they doing, and what do we need them to think, feelor do?
Starting with a creator means a channeldecision has already been made. Starting with the audience preserves thefreedom to decide what the idea needs, what role creators should play and wherethe content can work hardest.
That is the broader opportunity for Motion:not simply matching brands with creators, but connecting creator influence withthe wider video journey so that a strong idea can begin with creators andcontinue across social, online video and premium screens.
From creator influence to connected influence
There is no single formula for creatormarketing because creators do not have a single job.
They can help brands enter an existingcultural behavior. They can introduce a new product or ritual. They can createparticipation and discovery. And the content they produce can become creativefuel for a much broader media campaign.
The next phase of creator marketing is notabout treating creators as another isolated media channel. It is aboutunderstanding where creator influence fits within the full audience journey andconnecting that influence to the environments audiences move through every day.
The common thread is understanding theaudience and objective first, then giving creators a clear and credible roleand determining how that influence can travel across the wider media ecosystem.
That is where creator marketing becomesmore than a channel. It becomes part of a connected audience and videostrategy.
Sources
• Dailymotion Business x L’OR Espresso campaign materials andcondensed press write-up: Staying Awake (2026) and Coconut Iced (2025),including creator, activation, media and campaign performance results.
• L’OR / JDE Peet’s validated partnership language supplied toDailymotion Business, October 2026.
• Performance Marketing World, Haymarket Media Group, L’OR /Dailymotion creator marketing byline featuring Dailymotion CMO Hamza Kourimate,14 October 2026.
• Dailymotion Business internal product and positioning materials forMotion and RAY.
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