A creator may produce the right kind of content, reach the right demographic, and generate impressive engagement—yet still communicate values that conflict with the brand paying them.
That risk is difficult to detect because creator identity is rarely fixed. Influencers continuously adjust how they present themselves across platforms, audiences, cultural moments, and commercial opportunities.
A 2026 study published in Frontiers in Political Science makes this problem unusually visible. Researchers analyzed 50 Kazakhstani influencers, 500 Instagram and TikTok posts, and 3,000 audience comments published between 2023 and 2024.
Their findings point to a larger lesson for influencer marketing: brand fit is not a category label. It is a behavioral pattern.
Influencers do not communicate one stable identity
The researchers identified four recurring strategies influencers used when navigating traditional and Western values: selective Westernization, neotraditionalism, cosmopolitan-liberal positioning, and ambivalence.
Approximately 27% of the analyzed content used neotraditionalist discourse, combining traditional cultural symbols with modern consumer culture. Another 22% adopted a more explicitly cosmopolitan-liberal position, while 13% openly expressed uncertainty between competing value systems.
The researchers described the broader pattern as “strategic incoherence”: partially incompatible positions maintained through selective language, different contexts, and changes in presentation over time.
This does not necessarily mean creators are being dishonest. Human identities are complex, and influencers often speak to several communities simultaneously.
But for brands, the implication is important. A creator profile cannot be understood through a biography, category tag, or small sample of attractive posts. The marketing team needs to understand what the creator represents consistently—and where that representation changes.
Engagement can conceal disagreement
The study also analyzed how audiences responded to influencer content.
Of the 3,000 comments examined, 41% took a liberal-supportive position, 34% were conservative-oppositional, and 25% attempted to reconcile the two perspectives.
That means a post could generate substantial interaction while dividing the audience almost evenly.
From a marketing perspective, this is a critical distinction. High engagement may indicate enthusiasm, but it can also indicate conflict, moral criticism, or cultural polarization. The engagement rate alone cannot explain which one is occurring.
A creator with an active comment section may look commercially powerful in a spreadsheet. But if a meaningful percentage of that activity comes from followers rejecting the creator’s message, the brand is entering a different environment than the headline numbers suggest.
Engagement measures activity. It does not automatically measure trust, agreement, or brand safety.
The same creator may represent different things on different platforms
The researchers found systematic differences between platforms. Instagram content tended to feature more neotraditionalist positioning, while TikTok content was more likely to express cosmopolitan-liberal values.
Some influencers active on both platforms adjusted their value positioning according to the audience and platform culture.
Timing mattered as well. During Ramadan, 89% of the influencers incorporated Islamic symbolism into their content, even though their everyday publishing outside the religious period was predominantly secular.
This demonstrates why platform fit and brand fit should not be treated as the same decision.
A creator selected through Instagram data may present a different identity on TikTok. A campaign reviewed during a culturally significant period may not reflect the creator’s normal content. A single sponsored post may appear aligned while the broader publishing history tells a more complicated story.
Brands therefore need to examine creators across multiple posts, themes, moments, and—when relevant—platforms.
Cultural identity can also become commercial positioning
One of the study’s sharper observations concerns the commercialization of tradition.
Traditional clothing, food, language, and cultural practices were sometimes transformed into visual branding assets. Heritage helped creators differentiate themselves inside global attention markets while still using the aesthetic and commercial logic of Instagram and TikTok.
This creates another decision challenge for brands: cultural visibility does not automatically equal cultural credibility.
A creator may use tradition as a deeply held identity, an educational mission, an audience-building strategy, or a commercially useful visual style. Often, it is a mixture of all four.
Marketing teams should not attempt to judge whether someone’s identity is “authentic.” But they should understand how that identity operates within the creator’s content and how audiences respond when it is connected to products, luxury, consumption, or sponsored messaging.
What brands should evaluate before spending
This research did not test campaign ROI, purchasing behavior, or brand-lift outcomes. It therefore cannot prove that creators with conflicting value positions perform worse commercially.
It does, however, expose a weakness in conventional creator selection.
Before approving a creator, marketing teams should ask:
Is the creator’s positioning consistent across recent content, or does it change substantially by context?
Which subjects produce genuine support, and which generate opposition or moral criticism?
Does the audience respond differently when the creator moves from personal expression to commercial promotion?
Are the creator’s contradictions compatible with the brand—or could they place the brand inside an existing cultural conflict?
Is the decision based on a representative content history or only a few high-performing posts?
These questions cannot be answered through follower count alone. They require analysis of content patterns, audience reactions, organic performance, context, and multidimensional risk signals.
Brand fit must become an evidence-based decision
The Kazakhstan study is geographically and culturally specific. Its sample concentrated on larger lifestyle, beauty, fashion, family, and motivational creators, so its percentages should not be generalized to every market.
But the mechanism it reveals is much broader.
Influencers do not simply distribute brand messages. They operate as cultural interpreters, combining personal identity, audience expectations, platform incentives, and commercial pressure.
This is why creator discovery is only the beginning of the decision. The harder question is whether the creator’s demonstrated content pattern gives the brand enough evidence to invest with confidence.
Influencer marketing needs more than another creator list. It needs a decision layer that helps brands understand who they are backing before the budget is committed. That is the direction we are building toward at Flonci.
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