In advance of the upcoming Association of National Advertisers' Creator Marketing Conference in Las Vegas, I spoke with Carley Caldas, Senior Vice President, Marketing & Creative at eos. There she oversees all areas of marketing, including brand strategy, creative, advertising, consumer PR, social media and creator marketing. She has scaled the brand’s TikTok following to 1.3M+ and reshaped marketing around a creator- and community-centric model that celebrates authentic, diverse voices. That shift has fueled viral moments, built real loyalty and fandom, and delivered measurable business results. Carley shared her views on issues including agency models for influencer marketing, KPIs, opportunities for the industry, and more.
Bill Duggan: What is your agency model - in-house, external, or a hybrid? And please discuss that a bit.
Carley Caldas: Our agency model has evolved significantly over time. We started out 100 percent external, but as creator marketing became a more core growth lever for the business, it made sense to build deeper capability internally.
Today, we operate in a hybrid model, with the majority of our creator activations led by our in-house creator team and complemented by external partners. Bringing more of this work in-house allows us to stay close to the brand, the consumer, and the culture in real time. It gives us speed, sharper creative intuition, and tighter alignment with our long-term brand strategy.
At the same time, we’re very intentional about where we lean on external agencies -- whether that’s for scale, specialized expertise, or fresh perspective. I don’t believe in being dogmatic about models. The goal is to build the right ecosystem to serve both the brand and the business.
Ultimately, this hybrid approach gives us the best of both worlds: strong brand stewardship and agility internally, paired with partners who can push us and help us see around corners. That balance has been critical as creator marketing continues to evolve from a tactical channel into a long-term brand-building engine.
Duggan: What are your key KPIs for influencer/creator marketing?
Caldas: We take a layered approach to KPIs. At the foundation, we track standard performance metrics -- engagement rate, views, reach, and impressions -- to understand how content is resonating in-platform.
From there, we go deeper. We closely monitor earned media value, follower growth, and, when possible, brand lift associated with individual partnerships. These metrics help us understand what a creator contributes beyond a single post and often tell a more holistic story about long-term brand impact.
That said, some of the most important signals aren’t always the easiest to quantify. Social sentiment, comment quality, and the narrative that emerges from a partnership are incredibly important to us. We spend time reading comments and understanding how people are talking about the brand -- and why something worked or didn’t.
This is where the marketer’s point of view matters. Data is essential, but it doesn’t replace judgment. Sometimes the numbers won’t fully capture the potential of a creative risk or cultural moment. You need marketers who can synthesize the data, trust their gut, and spot the diamonds -- those opportunities where impact shows up in brand love and relevance before it appears on a dashboard.
Duggan: Do you typically use paid media to boost posts from influencers?
Caldas: Yes -- but very intentionally. When it makes sense, we prefer to boost directly from creator handles rather than running content through ads manager, as it preserves authenticity and keeps the content feeling native to the platform. That said, we’ve done both, and I don’t believe in blanket rules.
Not every piece of creator content should be boosted. Sometimes the right move is to let something live organically. One of the things I love most about paid amplification is the ability to elevate smaller creators with incredible insight, personality, or cultural relevance who may not have built-in scale. Paid support can give their voice far more reach than organic distribution alone.
At the same time, the platforms have changed. There’s less opportunity for branded or user-generated content to “go viral,” and frequency has become a persistent challenge. More views don’t automatically mean better outcomes. That’s why the marketer’s role is to find the balance—choosing the right content to boost, analyzing performance mid-flight, and optimizing in real time based on both quantitative metrics and qualitative feedback.
Duggan: Where are the biggest opportunities for the industry to help marketers optimize their influencer marketing investments?
Caldas: One of the biggest opportunities is to reframe how we think about creators -- not as a line item in a media plan, but as true brand partners.
Yes, creator marketing is a marketing investment. But the most successful programs are initiated and nurtured like person-to-person relationships, not transactional initiatives. When creators are treated as a tactic, their value is limited. When they’re treated as partners, something far more powerful is unlocked.
There’s also an opportunity for marketers to get more comfortable with letting go. We’re trained to be stewards of the brand, which often comes with a desire for control over the message and outcome. The best creator marketing often requires the opposite. It’s about balancing business needs with the understanding that a creator’s perspective may be more culturally relevant than our own.
That’s what makes great creator marketing both special and scary. You’re putting something you’ve worked hard to build into someone else’s hands. But when you find the right partners and trust them to lead, it becomes a two-way street. Creators feel that trust -- and when they do, they deliver their most authentic and impactful work.
Bill Duggan: See you again in Las Vegas!
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