Trends: How brands like Nissan are connecting with creator communities
Image of Nissan Patrol - It's Out There by TBWA\Melbourne for Nissan Australia
Closing the Cultural Chasm, one of the trends earmarked by D&AD in our 2026 Trend Report, shines a spotlight on how brands are engaging with creators and influencers in a naturalal way.
It’s a necessary response to the growing media fluency of audiences, who have become highly attuned to transactional content, stiff partnerships, and heavy-handed endorsements. The entire field of content creation is maturing with it. Where a half-hearted collab with a famous face might have once sufficed, today a more modest yet targeted approach can be many times more effective. In this next phase of cultural influence and creator partnerships, the value comes from a creator- or community-led idea rather than imposing from the top-down, an approach that revolves around deep listening and decentring the brand.
The Dark Soul of the Party, PepsiCo’s 2025 campaign created with Don by Havas, was born from a TikTok video in which a fan mixed different snacks into his own late-night concoction. Instead of imitating the trend, the brand collaborated with the original creator on turning the idea into a real product, Paketaxo Dark, which genuinely made it onto the market.
"It’s a necessary response to the growing media fluency of audiences, who have become highly attuned to transactional content."
Another notable example of leaning into existing creator interests and communities is Nissan’s 2025 campaign Nissan Patrol – It’s Out There, orchestrated by TBWA\Melbourne. The brand enlisted livestreamer Oscar Pearce, whose followers regularly tune in to watch him play the Street View-based navigation game GeoGuessr, to plant a Nissan Patrol somewhere in a map of Australia, then invited his audience to track it down inside the game. The brand was at the forefront of the challenge yet at the same time receded into the background as Pearce, his community, and the game itself became the focal point of the campaign, deftly achieving a tricky balance between exposure and restraint.
These campaigns and others like them show the value in co-creation and leading with people’s genuine interests. Brands wanting to keep with these shifts need to understand the value of ceding control, aiming for relevance over reach, and seeing creators as creatives, not just distribution channels.
To learn more about this trend and others shaping the future of advertising and design, read the D&AD Trend Report 2026 in full.