Each week, we'll bring you select insights from our newsletter, How to Build Brands and Influence People (HBBIP). To have all of these insights delivered directly to your inbox, subscribe today!
I know I’m supposed to be a writer and whatnot, but honestly, I’m at a loss for words.
I mean, who wouldn’t be at a loss for words with content like this?
100 editions. 100 stories. 100 brands to learn from. 100 reasons why creator marketing is the world’s most exciting industry to work in and write about. 100% real, unfiltered, actionable data and insights. 100 laughs, 100 graphs (those are per-newsletter figures, not cumulative). And, at least for me, way more than 100 reasons to be thankful.
When we started this newsletter just about two years ago—our first issue ran September 18, 2023—we weren’t entirely sure what we wanted it to be. We knew that we wanted to tell cool stories about an extremely cool industry, and highlight CreatorIQ’s proprietary data while doing so. We know that we wanted to expand our audience via best-in-class thought leadership, and set a standard for newsletters about the industry. Personally, I knew that I wanted to get really good at the ‘insert chart’ feature on Google Sheets, so mission accomplished on that.
As I said in our very first issue, “it’s our hope that in time, this newsletter will become your go-to source for data and insights on major trends within the wide, wonderful, wild world of the Creator Economy.”
And hey, guess what! All of that is still true. But while I could wax rhapsodic about the changes that this newsletter has gone through in its first 100 editions, I’m a lot more interested in how the industry has changed, and how those changes will inform the next 100 HBBIPs, and the next 100 after that.
It’s always pretty obnoxious when writers over-rely on quoting themselves, but hey, this is my 100th edition milestone celebration, and I’ll do what I want! So with a nod to the past and an eye toward the future, here’s another quote from our very first edition:
“When I first started working in creator marketing, all I ever heard was that it was the future: brands would leverage it, creators would gain clout, and the face of advertising would be transformed forever. From where I’m sitting today, the Creator Economy has exceeded all expectations, permeating countless aspects of daily life. Creator marketing is still the future, but that future is now.”
The future that I was talking about in the past is, of course, our present. But even in that past, I was saying the future had already arrived. So if the future was actually the present of the past, that means we’re in a new future now—one even more advanced than I had previously imagined!
(See, this is why you read HBBIP: come for the insights, stay for the temporal paradoxes.)
What characterizes that new future? To answer this question, I’d like to direct your attention to this article.
That’s Rolling Stone’s list of the top 25 most influential creators of 2025. It’s worth a read not only because Rolling Stone put together their list using CreatorIQ data (though that obviously means it’s well worth your time), but because I think it does a great job of capturing the state of the industry right now. If you want to understand the zeitgeist of creator marketing—which I think you do, since you opened this email—then this is a great place to start.
What stands out to me? If you want to be a top creator in 2025, what do you have to be?
Time is short. Attention spans are shorter. It’s not enough to be one thing anymore: if you want to rise to the top of today’s creator game, you’ve gotta be comedian, best friend, troll, advice-giver, product expert, and actor all in one. It doesn’t hurt if you can be your own director, editor, and lighting technician, too.
But today’s creators don’t just have to improve their functional know-how of content production: they also have to expand their vertical knowledge. Consumers are more keen on cross-vertical exploration than ever, and brands have responded with increasingly unconventional collaborations between different industries.
Top creators function as entertainers first, but brand advocacy obviously still plays a crucial role in how they gain clout and earn a living. While the old models of creatorhood might have had a vlogger come up in a narrow lane, focusing solely on fashion, beauty, or gaming, today’s creators have to be ready for anything, and prepared to talk about everything. With the ‘lifestyle’ category encompassing ever-broader territory, it’s perfectly normal to hear athletes weighing in on tech, tech bloggers weighing in on beauty, or beauty experts talking about sports.
Naturally, if you want to be a creator, it helps to have a bright, energetic, extroverted personality. (That’s why I write.) So in that sense, creators have always been always-on. But now I mean that they are quite literally almost never off-camera.
Take this whole Twitch thing. Time was, longform creator content meant that a beauty YouTuber had a particularly hefty Sephora haul to review. Now, creators are liable to be broadcasting live for hours on end, and while they have a plethora of platforms on which to do so, we can thank Twitch for ushering in the age of livestreams.
Whether creators are playing video games, holding forth on current events, having a lazy night in, or just going about their lives in any number of ways, this content brings fans behind the scenes, providing the authentic, unvarnished approach that’s the goal of all creator marketing. (Plus, creators often drive crazy sales numbers for their products during these livestreams, which just so happens to be another one of creator marketing’s primary goals.)
By closing the loop between fans and creators, and providing a degree of direct interaction not previously seen in the industry, livestreams have ushered in a bold new era for creator marketing—one that savvy brands are already taking advantage of.
If there’s a single takeaway to, uh, take away from the Rolling Stone article, a single thing to understand about where we’re at right now, it’s this:
Creators are not reacting to the culture. They are not off on their own little island or niche within the culture. They are not culture-adjacent. THEY ARE THE CULTURE.
Everyone on the Rolling Stone list boasts over 1 million followers, ranging all the way up to Mr. Beast’s 871.6M (not a typo) YouTube subscribers. This discrepancy actually sparked a wee bit of controversy from Mr. Beast himself, who seems to believe that Mick Jagger wrote the article:
Unless of course Mr. Beast knows that Rolling Stone is unaffiliated with the band, and he’s going for a joke, in which case, haha! I’ve been told my humor is oblique (read: not funny) too, Mr. Beast! We’re not so different, you and I. Now please do a fundraiser for me.
The point stands: for billions of people—no exaggeration—all across the globe, creators are igniting commerce and conversation. They’re a go-to source for understanding, processing and acting on what’s happening in the world, and they do it by being informed, omnipresent, and endlessly adaptable. They are media powerhouses in their own right, new school publishers, full-fledged brands, armies of one.
So yeah, that future I mentioned two years ago? We’ve blown right past it.
For those keeping score at home, 2025’s top creators are:
Those are powerful, compelling qualities. In fact, I take them as a challenge. As a creator marketing company, those should be CreatorIQ’s marching orders: how do we get to be more like that? How do we learn from our industry, and practice what we preach?
And how do I play my part in that process?
A solid YoY 2x-ing is nothing to scoff at. But can we go even further?
Well, here’s one way. Like I announced last week, we’ll be leveling up the newsletter you know and love by introducing How to Build Brands and Influence People: Live! Consider it my own personal livestream.
This monthly LinkedIn Live series will feature me and some very special guests diving into trends in the creator economy, spotlighting standout brands, and giving you the answers you need to know about where the space is heading next. Best of all, we’ll be directly answering audience questions, giving us a chance to interact far more directly than we can via email.
Personally, that sort of exchange with my audience is what I’m looking forward to the most. After all, creators seem to like it.
Our inaugural edition of HBBIP:L! came to you at 11 AM Eastern on September 10—hope you were there! If you missed it, never fear: we’ll have more info on our next sessions soon.
But that’s not the only change that will be coming to the HBBIP Cinematic Universe…
Through our first 100 editions, we’ve done so much that I’m proud of. In no particular order:
We investigated how creator marketing drove exponential growth for some of the world’s hottest brands before those brands saw blockbuster, billion-dollar acquisitions. While everyone else was scrambling around asking “how” and “why,” we were out there offering answers. (Poppi; RHODE Skin.)
We broke into fast food, highlighting how QSR’s are leveraging creator marketing to expand their audiences. (Raising Cane’s.)
We described Rick Ross as a “rapper and grunt enthusiast,” which might still be my favorite joke we’ve ever done. (Luc Belaire.)
We scored touchdowns, home runs, goals, and buzzer beaters with consistent analysis of the burgeoning sports-slash-creator ecosystem. (Too many to list, but I like this one.)
We examined shifting platform dynamics within the creator economy, calling attention to the rise of streaming and podcast content. (Patreon.)
We met the ladies who might just be HBBIP’s most enduring side-characters: the White Fox Baddies, gone but not forgotten. (White Fox Boutique.)
We profiled how creator marketing is inspiring niche communities in unexpected places, including the airline and grocery industries. (Travel edition; Trader Joe’s.)
We paid tribute to all the friends and supporters we’ve met along the way, while also recapping another successful Creator Connect event. (CreatorIQ Connect Europe recap.)
We turned our eyes toward the world at large, highlighting how creator marketing is powering established brands in Europe and around the globe. (IKEA; Premier League.)
Finally, and dare I say most importantly, I succeeded in my two-year effort to get free swag—thank you again to LSKD for your kindness! (Fanatics + LSKD.)
I could easily name dozens of other personal highlights, but these should hopefully be enough to reveal the scope of what we’re doing. Across verticals and markets, across brands big and small, across newly launched upstarts and companies with hundreds of years of history, with insights and jokes and plenty of graphs, we’ve demonstrated the size and complexity of the creator economy, all while making it a little more digestible.
I’m proud of that. It sparks joy. But there’s still a lot more to do.
It’s not just creators who are growing more sophisticated and more powerful. So too are brands’ creator marketing programs. Company by company, we’re seeing widespread adoption of creators across the entire marketing mix. Gone are the days of the silo, when savvy marketers had to scrounge for resources and convince their higher-ups about the value of creator marketing. We’ll have more details about all that in this year’s State of Creator Marketing Report—our biggest and best yet!—but suffice it to say that the paradigm has shifted, and industry leaders are embracing creator marketing more than ever.
But as any tragically murdered uncle of a superhero could tell you, with great power comes great responsibility. Yes, organizations recognize creator marketing’s tremendous impact. But now they want to know how to effectively leverage it, and measure their progress.
We’ve said a lot about measurement, and how winning brands should think of it. To understand our approach, I recommend starting with this blog post from CreatorIQ’s Head of Global Measurement—and friend of HBBIP—Michael Lambie. The shift beyond awareness metrics toward a deeper understanding of every funnel stage is something that the entire industry is clamoring for right now. In HBBIP’s next 100 editions, I want to be a part of telling those stories and providing those solutions.
Make no mistake: I’m proud of what we’ve accomplished. But as the industry changes and new needs emerge, we have to adapt. If I’ve learned anything about the creator economy, it’s that you can’t rest on your laurels. Today’s innovators quickly become yesterday’s cautionary tales.
Too often with these creator marketing stories, we’re just scratching the surface. That’s why HBBIP and CreatorIQ are pledging to go not just deeper but wider, tackling new verticals and new regions. This effort will require a good deal of learning, and might lead to some discomfort, but I’m committed to the process. Plus, I know that I won’t be alone on this journey: I’ll have the best company and the fanbase in creator marketing newsletters right by my side.
Speaking of having folks by my side, that brings me to the perfect opportunity to thank everyone who’s been instrumental to HBBIP’s success so far:
Thank you to Ashley Waxman, CreatorIQ’s VP of Brand Marketing and my manager, for giving me space to experiment with this newsletter, and always guiding me to greater heights.
Thank you to Brit Starr, CreatorIQ’s CMO and Ashley’s manager, for being a key part of the early push behind HBBIP, and for being with me every step of the way.
Thank you to Leah Spector, CreatorIQ’s Director of Communications & Content, and Kimi Hurtado, CreatorIQ’s Social Media Manager, for all your guidance and coordination with both the newsletter, our HBBIP social videos, and our upcoming HBBIP: Live! series. Excited for so much more to come!
Thank you to Amanda Kahn, CreatorIQ’s Brand Marketing Specialist, for always getting the HBBIP blogs up on time, and for always letting me know when you’ve done so. I’m grateful to be able to set my watch to our “you’re live!/thanks!” Slack exchange every Thursday afternoon.
Thank you to everyone on the CreatorIQ sales team for approaching me with ideas and opportunities for this newsletter—keep ’em coming! Special shoutouts to Anna, Henri, Joel, Justin, Rachel, Rebecca, Taylor, and Xav, and apologies to anyone I’ve forgotten.
Thank you to Conor Begley, former Chief Strategy Officer at CreatorIQ, for helping to get the newsletter off the ground in the first place. Don’t forget me now that you’re off to go sell beer (by “don’t forget me,” I mean please send me some free beer).
And a BIG thank you to Lauren Lippert, CreatorIQ’s Senior Digital Marketing Manager, plus my partner in crime and unsung hero of HBBIP. Without Lauren, we wouldn’t have nifty emails sent out each week, or cool graphs, or comprehensive performance metrics, or that meme of me as Taylor Swift from earlier in this email. In fact, we just straight up wouldn’t have HBBIP. So thank you, Lauren, for all that you do.
But my biggest thank you, of course, is for…you! Yes, you.
Thank you to everyone who has read, subscribed to, laughed at, told your friends about, written back to, or just plain enjoyed HBBIP. I’ll even thank those who hate-read it, because joke’s on you: that still counts as opening the email. We take those.
Seriously though: thank you. The most gratifying part of the entire HBBIP process has been gathering a far-flung scattering of creator marketing enthusiasts and building a community. Thank you for your support and your belief in me, and please know that in the next 100 issues I’ll be repaying that support and belief 100x.
And as always, thank you for reading. See you next time.
To get all of these stories, plus much more, delivered to your inbox weekly, be sure to subscribe to our newsletter.