On 1 October 2026, we welcomed marketers, brand managers and partners to Prime Tower in Zurich for the YKONE Zurich x CAMPAYGN Academy 2026. The focus was one question every brand working with creators has to answer, and one that keeps getting harder: how do we make good decisions?

The question that never changed

Influence has changed shape again and again. First there were blogs, then social media, then influencers, then the creator economy, and now AI. Channels, formats and platforms keep shifting. Yet one question has stayed the same: who do we trust to represent our brand?

At its core, every marketer makes four decisions:

• Who should represent my brand?

• Where does my audience actually pay attention?

• Why is this creator interesting?

• What's next, and where should I invest?

Too many creators, too little confidence

The challenge is not a lack of options. It is the opposite. There are around 207 million creators worldwide (Visa, Monetized: 2025 Creator Report). According to the Influencer Marketing Benchmark Report 2026, 89.1% of marketers deal with at least one form of fraud or quality risk in their influencer programmes.

Too many creators. Too much content. Too many metrics. Too little confidence.

AI was supposed to make this easier. Instead, it multiplied the decisions: more content, more creators, more data and more speed. McKinsey reports that 88% of organisations now regularly use AI in at least one business function, up from 78% a year earlier.

Reach is not relevance

Influence has become multidimensional, and reach is no longer the same as relevance. The real question is: is this creator right for our brand, in this culture, at this moment?

That isn't a data gap. Brands have more data than ever. It's a decision gap.

What we mean by taste

To close that gap, we talked about taste. By taste we don't mean personal preference, trends or aesthetics. We mean the ability to make the right call. Taste is decision.

Introducing the Decision Layer

This led to the model at the heart of the Academy, the Decision Layer:

1. Data tells us what is happening.

2. AI recommends where to look and what to consider.

3. Humans decide what truly fits the brand, the culture and the moment.

Data and AI make us faster and more precise. The judgement, and the responsibility, stay with people.

Putting it into practice: gut feeling vs. data

To make the model tangible, we ran a live exercise. We showed the audience two Swiss creators, first only their profiles and their Instagram feeds, and asked a simple question: which one would you choose?

One creator had a polished, premium lifestyle feed full of travel, nature and cars, plus past collaborations with luxury brands. The other had an authentic, sport-driven feed built around running and cycling. Hands went up on both sides, and the picks were driven mostly by look and feel.

Then came the reveal. The second creator had a smaller-looking profile but clearly outperformed on almost every metric: an engagement rate of 9.8% vs. 4.1%, 91.9% active followers vs. 58.7%, and almost four times as many interactions per post. The audiences differed sharply too: one was mostly female, the other majority male.

The point was not that the data picks the "winner". A brand targeting a female, premium-lifestyle audience could still choose the first creator. Data shows us what is happening. Deciding what fits the brief, the culture and the moment is still a human call. That is the Decision Layer in action.

Campaygn: the Decision Layer, powered by technology

We ended with a live demo of Campaygn, Ykone's proprietary technology. It provides real-time data insights on creators and campaigns, so teams spend less time collecting numbers and more time making better decisions.

Thank you

A big thank you to everyone who joined us at Prime Tower for the questions, the discussion and the energy in the room. We're already looking forward to the next edition.

Want to learn how the Decision Layer and Campaygn can sharpen your next creator campaign? Get in touch at zurich@ykone.com.