Influencers have become “walking billboards,” according to Will Caplan, co-founder and CEO of AI-powered Tano, cutting straight to the heart of why he believes influencer marketing isn’t delivering the results it once did. “There are influencers we’ve worked with doing four or five brand deals in a single month. When consumers see that, they stop trusting the recommendations.”

This erosion of trust strikes at the very foundation of an industry built on personal connection. The creator economy, which once thrived on genuine recommendations, has morphed into a marketplace where authenticity is becoming rare and brand fatigue is setting in. Brands that once saw extraordinary returns from influencer partnerships now question whether they’re just adding to the noise.

Having experienced both sides of the equation, Will is taking this challenge head-on. Before founding Tano with Sagar Shah in February to help e-commerce and Shopify brands build large-scale ambassador programs, he helped grow his sister’s Instagram channel to hundreds of thousands of followers while managing the business aspects of her creator career. Simultaneously, he executed brand partnerships for B2B companies at firms like Encord.

This dual experience revealed a core problem: the industry is caught between fragmented software tools that require expertise to operate and traditional agencies that often function as black boxes. “Either use these tools that you didn’t want or know how to use, or use agencies, and you just threw money down the drain a lot of the time,” Will explains. “You give them 100k, they don’t tell you where half of it goes, and the other half goes to a few influencers who maybe do well, maybe don’t.”

With the rise of AI-generated content, this credibility crisis becomes more urgent. As virtual influencers become increasingly sophisticated, Will predicts that verifiable human genuineness will become the crucial differentiator. “In an AI age where we’re going to get AI influencers, what’s going to set those apart from real people is just the fact that you can be authentic and genuine and actually have a real connection with someone.”

Tano’s approach addresses this industry shift by recognizing that creators aren’t just marketing channels—they’re individuals with genuine preferences. “Influencers, just like consumers, are real people,” Will emphasizes. “At the end of the day, they have brands that they love and interests, and if you can align those with the brand, you open up this huge opportunity for true brand evangelism.”

This insight drives Will’s vision for the industry’s future. “There’s going to be a pivot back towards a moment where those influencers who do 20 brand deals a month get fewer and fewer because brands have come to the conclusion that there’s no ROI on those.” 

Tano’s AI-powered approach offers a third path—handling end-to-end influencer marketing workflows while maintaining the transparency and control brands need to cultivate real relationships at scale.

AI-Powered Ambassador Discovery and Management

Tano’s AI agent—named Charlie—helps brands build ambassador programs based on genuine connection and shared values. As Will notes, for brands working with Tano, the experience is akin to adding a new, exceptionally capable team member dedicated to building and managing ambassador relationships. 

“For them, you can imagine it as something very similar to if you brought on a new member of staff,” he explains. “We can integrate into your Slack, we’ll provide you a dashboard so you can see what this AI employee is doing at any point, and then you can jump in and get involved as a human.”

The workflow begins when a brand outlines campaign objectives to Charlie. The AI agent then searches through Tano’s database of creators, identifying potential ambassadors who align with the brand’s values and audience. After human approval of selected creators, Charlie handles outreach, manages communications, and collects necessary information—like shipping details for product fulfillment or specific details about creators’ needs to ensure proper product matching.

For instance, when working with skincare brand Skin + Me, Charlie identifies creators with relevant interests and then gathers specific information about their skin type to ensure the brand can send them appropriate products. “They need to know what kind of skin the creator has so they can send them the right products,” Will notes. “Charlie gets all this information, just like basic email back and forth, just like getting this data, just like you would with an employee.”

Unlike agencies that operate as black boxes, Tano provides complete visibility into activities and spending. “It’s like having this super-powered employee who you hire, who can do everything that an agency can, but critically still has the control and the oversight mechanisms that you would have if it were just a normal employee,” Will emphasizes. Unlike software platforms that merely provide interfaces, Charlie actually executes tasks rather than requiring humans to operate the tools themselves.

For creators, they receive personalized emails from Charlie, who identifies as an AI agent working on behalf of Tano and the brand. All interactions occur via email, eliminating the need to sign up for yet another platform or learn a new system, thereby reducing friction in the collaboration process.

A Performance-Based Business Model

Tano’s business model reflects its ambassador-focused approach. Rather than charging subscription fees or taking a percentage of marketing spend, the company bills brands per creator who actively participates in campaigns.

“We charge around 35-45 bucks per individual creator who goes live initially. And then we have an ongoing fee for managing those creators, a much lower fee for managing those creators, and trying to get them to produce the most important thing, which is revenue for the company,” Will explains.

This performance-based pricing ensures Tano’s interests align with delivering results for brands, specifically, finding creators who genuinely connect with the brand and drive actual revenue, not just vanity metrics. The model also scales naturally with campaign size, making it suitable for brands building extensive ambassador networks.

Early Success with Growing Brands

Though still in its early months, Tano has already secured partnerships with notable companies that fit its ideal customer profile: established brands with proven products that are ready to scale through real ambassador relationships. Current clients include Wild Deodorant and Skin + Me in the UK, along with IM8 (David Beckham’s new brand) and Bolt.

“They’re like mid-size startup-ish,” Will says. “They have millions and millions in revenue, and for them and for us, it’s a fit because they’ve proven that people want the product and they’ve proven that it works, and now they want to actually scale.”

These brands have confirmed their market fit and now need to expand their reach through genuine creator partnerships.

The Human Element

Despite its AI foundation, Tano’s approach centers on enhancing human connections rather than replacing them. Will, who previously worked in AI at companies like Encord before founding Tano, carefully distinguishes between tasks that benefit from automation and those that require human creativity and relationship-building.

“We’re obviously incredibly aware of the fact that we’re operating in a relationship-driven business, and just because we can automate things, it doesn’t necessarily mean that we should,” Will emphasizes.

Tano categorizes routine tasks, such as finding relevant creators, collecting information, and generating reports, as “chores” that can be fully automated. Meanwhile, strategic decisions about which creators truly fit a brand’s aesthetic and building personal relationships remain firmly in human hands.

“It’s just like passing the ball backwards and forwards,” explains Will. “When humans need to have a personal connection in community building, then it’s great to bring a human in.”

This balanced approach actually creates more time for meaningful human interaction by eliminating administrative burdens. “Rather than an influencer marketing manager or community manager spending all day just trying to find new influencers and doing boring reporting, take all of that away from them,” Will suggests. “Now they have nine hours a day to visit one of their great ambassadors on the other side of the country or get on a Zoom call and spend half an hour with them when they just didn’t have the time to do that before.”

Future Currency of Digital Marketing

Will sees the premium on real human connection only increasing as AI-generated content becomes more common across digital channels. The ability to verify and cultivate genuine relationships will become increasingly valuable as the distinction between human and AI-created content becomes more challenging.

“Within the next two years, unless you see them in real life, I don’t think you’ll have any idea whether it’s a real person or not,” Will predicts regarding AI-generated content. This change, he adds, will reshape how brands approach creator partnerships, placing even greater emphasis on verified human genuineness.

Will’s vision extends beyond marketing to the broader digital space: “My hot take is the next big social network will be a human social network where they do identity checks on you and ensure that you are real.” This perspective aligns with Tano’s core mission of enabling true brand evangelism at scale, leveraging AI to facilitate rather than fabricate human connections.

For brands operating in the creator economy, Tano aims to revive what made creator partnerships effective in the first place: genuine enthusiasm from real people sharing products they truly love with audiences who trust them.

“All we’re looking to do is just build as great a product as we can and take away all the boring jobs, the manual work that influencer marketers don’t want to do,” Will concludes. “We want to equip them with the tooling and Charlie to do all that work for them and provide them with enough time to do the other exciting things that only they can do.”