Creator Economy Whack-A-Mole

NEW: Don’t miss another issue! Get this newsletter delivered in full to your inbox every Monday – subscribe on Beehiiv !

This Week: Posting on Tuesday today because of our US Labor Day Holiday. I had an opportunity to listen to my favorite band play four completely different concerts Thursday – Sunday, which partially inspired today’s newsletter. Each story illuminates a different facet of both media meltdown and dramatic changes in the creator economy. Even my relatively new “Beast Watch” section is a symptom of this shift. It’s way more than just careening from Brat to Demure.

??

CHIK-FIL-A LAYS AN EGG

Chik-Fil-A clearly learned all the wrong lessons from its viral encounter with @mirithesiren . Quick recap from April: devoted employee posts popular TikToks about behind the scenes food and fun. Chik-Fil-A throws the HR book at her. She quickly decamps to Shake Shack and goes even more viral . Chik-Fil-A’s master response five months later? Its own streaming service featuring reality TV shows and more. We’ve already got DogTV – and now I guess we’re in for ChickenTV. So dumb on so many levels. Andrew Wallenstein buries it better than I ever could .

• Related: Kyra releases its QSR 2024 report, showing that GenZ prefers wild and crazy to staid and, er, whatever Chick-Fil-A is planning.

?

CAN YOU BE A DEMURE BRAT?

Moving at the speed of culture just became a constant wind-sprint. Brat Summer lasted all of a few weeks and has already given way to Demure Fall . Brands that leaned in quickly capitalized, but everyone else will likely end up in the “OK Boomer” camp. This feels like a repeat of the “hot creator” trend, where talent agencies and brands swoop in to embrace the latest it girl or guy, then quickly pivoting when the new new heartthrob turned up. Adept at mashing trends? Then go for it. But for everyone else, the incessant whack-a-trend leaves you exhausted and your marketing budget in tatters. There’s a time-tested alternative though: find those creators that resonate with your brand and your target market, and partner with them to build long-term success. Still want to chase trends? My friend Brooke Hammerling writes an amazing pop-culture weekly newsletter (and podcast) that’ll keep you up to date.

?

FRAGMENTING FANDOM

I’ve been thinking a lot about fragmentation of fandom and how it is already changing creator culture and new opportunities for growth. Much of GenZ belongs to fandoms shared by none of their friends, while many create content inside those fandoms too. The cancelling of Mr. Beast foreshadows the end of Peak Creator. Trends ignite and sputter like roman candles. The diffusion of participatory fandom is a huge trend that will shape brands, creators and companies. I’ve got some ideas about how ICE can explore – but I’d love your thoughts too.

?

TELEGRAM FOUNDER ARRESTED IN FRANCE

This one’s complicated. As the world grapples with whether (and how much) platforms should be responsible for posts made on their platforms, France struck the first blow, arresting Telegram’s CEO Pavel Durov during a stop over in the country. Telegram is supposedly rife with drug traffickers, con-men and child pornographers, but should it be held liable? And with Mark Zuckerberg publicly complaining about how the US squelched certain posts during Covid , battle lines are clearly being drawn. When does free speech stop – and who should be responsible? I fear we will end up silencing dissenting voices globally if the lines are too narrow. But also worry about harming the defenseless if it’s defined too broadly. The Telegram case also has geopolitical ramifications, as Russia basically seized Durov’s first startup, and the UAE is incensed as well too . Child safety, encryption and global enforcement of startups across country lines will be among the defining issues globally over the next few years. For now, maybe don’t stop off in France to gas up your Embraer Legacy 600.

• Related: The plot thickens, as a popular crypto-investor and game-streamer was also on board and now appears to be in hiding.
• Related: Twitter banned in Brazil .
• Related: TikTok must face the court in PA over the “blackout challenge”, as an appeals court rules TikTok CAN be liable for what it serves.

?

SPONSOR: Creators do punch well above their weight! Nielsen reported that Whalar campaigns had a ROI of $2.41, surpassing all other media channels. More importantly, creators are efficient - while making up less than 1% of total media, they contribute 3x the impact. Check out the full Media Mix Model (MMM) study?here ?to learn more about how creators are media investments.??

?

QUIBIS:

YOUTUBE

• YouTube now makes it easy to get a QR code for a channel . Why doesn’t every platform do this? Do you know how to get the secret LinkedIn QR code?
• YouTube recapped its 2024 Olympics coverage but missed the biggest trend : we preferred to experience the Games through the lens of athlete-creators, not our favorite creators on the ground simply reacting.

?

META

• Meta building a new lightweight VR headset that offloads processing and battery into a pocket-sized “puck” – due in 2027.
• New Instagram collage tool taps into a GenZ trend Pinterest has leaned into. This Is Important , says Lia Haberman .
• Instagram continues to roll out incremental features to its core products. Five new ones this week !
• A new integration from Instagram and Spotify will let users post real-time podcast listening to Notes.
• No more Spark AR Studio , as Meta says goodbye to creators and brands that have been building there since 2017. Yet another example of the perils of building things on rented land.

?

TIKTOK

• More TikTok Turnover – content strategy lead Nicole Iacopetti is out .
• TikTok wants you to get into a holiday spending mood with its new holiday marketing playbook . For the record, I’m already sick of pumpkin spice.
• Bytedance takes out a $9.5B loan . That’s a lot of money.

?

OTHER CREATOR ECONOMY

• VidCon sold to mega-events company Informa – who also recently bought Cannes Lion. Fun fact, Informa also bid on VidCon when I sold it to Viacom in 2017. They finally landed the fish. Also, what will this mean for VidCon and Cannes dates – will they still overlap?
• Related: Actors are getting rich at fan conventions – including those run by Informa - walking home with bags of dollar bills.
• Related: Major FOMO here because I’m going to miss All That Matters in Singapore in a few weeks. If you can attend, you should!
• Congrats to Kai Cenat and Rhett and Link - #1 and #2 on Rolling Stone’s highly subjective top 25 list of creators .
• Same to Steve Crombie and Amelia Darmawan at Totem for crushing the Australian social internet with a rave at a big-box hardware store. Really.
• We Will Continue to Make the FINEST Buggy-Whips FOREVER – said popular image editing software Procreate , swearing off the newfangled horseless carriage, er AI, permanently.
• Top media experts weigh in on what’s holding Podcasting back .
• We touched on the “creator vs. journalism” debate in our special White House issue. Taylor Lorenz jumps from the White House to the DNC and leans into the debate .
• What happens when video is no longer a profit center, and anyone can make it? Invisible Universe, according to Doug Shapiro . Also Toonstar .
• Perhaps just of interest to me and a few colleagues, but this is a good essay about the stark differences between LinkedIn newsletters and traditional email ones . Oh, and please subscribe to the Beehiiv version of this newslette r if you’ve made it this far.

?

CREATOR TECH – AI, WEB3, VR, MORE

• Playing video games improves mental well-being – at least in Japan
• Hank Green’s latest video implores YouTube to update the terms of service and add an AI Opt-Out for all creators . I agree with him 100%. He also asks YouTubers to fill out this survey .

?

BEAST WATCH

• DogPack404 strikes again, with an in-depth (but very lawyered up) look at Mr. Beast’s unofficial CEO , his cousin James.
• Related: Reddit users seem to think the video has been buried in search – not the first time I’ve heard whispers of Beast-related content being deprioritized at YouTube. But it’s likely just a quirk of the search algorithm, and not malicious.
• Production on Beast Games Part 2 is now underway in Toronto . Hopefully the Canadians are paying better attention to workplace conditions than Vegas did. Why Toronto? Certainly not to appease the local media production union – ACTRA – who has banned its members from participating .
• As we surmised a few weeks ago, it looks like Jimmy Donaldson won’t speak at VidSummit this year – a conference he partially owns. His speaker page is still live, but no sessions are linked .

?

RESEARCH

• Interesting new research from IAB on podcasting and the creator economy . Note that the IAB’s new V2.2 certification now provides a credible and generally accepted metric for brands, which is needed to help accelerate the business – according to my friend Rob Greenlee .

?

100% written by me – no human or AI ghostwriters were involved in the production (except for the cover art!).

Like this free newsletter? Buy me a coffee and say thanks! Or let’s do a meetup in your town.

I've built and sold multiple creator economy startups to top media companies - including Discovery and Paramount. ?Subscribe here on LinkedIn to get this newsletter every Monday.

Let me know what you think – email me at [email protected] . Thanks for reading and see you around the internet.