ArticleCreators, Influencers & The Attention Economy
This week’s issue is one I’ve thought about for nearly half a year, but couldn’t quite put together – at least, until the past few days. I’ve spent this week in Berlin at SMX Advanced: Europe, one of my absolute favorite conferences each year. I’ve always enjoyed getting lost in cities for the same reason I imagine many people enjoy sitting on beaches: it provides an opportunity to think, to look at an old puzzle with fresh eyes.
The lead-in to this week’s newsletter was one of the highest-engagement ones I’ve ever had:
So, what’s the connection between these ten people? In an effort to not bury the lede, I’m going to first provide the answer, then the rends I see converging, and finally, what brands can (and should) do about it.
What do they have in common? Put simply, every one of these ten people is a “triple threat”:
- Domain Expertise: Each person mentioned is a legitimate expert in their specific niche – they’ve honed their craft, they’ve walked the walk. As someone who is trying to hire, I can attest that this alone separates them from the vast majority of the industry.
- Personal Brand: There’s a fundamental difference between possessing domain expertise (which a fair number of people have) and being able to translate that expertise into a legitimate personal brand. Put simply, there are a lot of people who know their stuff, but don’t know how to leverage it into a personal brand.
- Pay It Forward: the final element – and I’d argue, the rarest element – is an ability and willingness to share both (1) and (2) to help others – friends, colleagues, employees, clients, whatever – to do the same. Not only have these people each built a wonderful personal brand, they’ve helped others do the same.
Each of these people represents the type of individual upon which a wildly successful brand could be built, and will be built in the future. As I alluded to above, I believe this shift – from company-centric to people-centric – is more than a fad. It’s tectonic. It’s an earthquake that will reverberate across channels and industries. And the brands that are ready for it – that have invested in the capabilities to not just survive, but to thrive – will be uniquely positioned to win from 2025 – 2030.
How Did We Get Here?
Over the last ~5 years, “influencer” economy has gone through what can charitably be described as some turbulent times – from flying high (who doesn’t remember the days when celebrities-turned-influencers were paid millions for posts?), to the lows (hundreds of brands reducing their influencer marketing budgets after failed experiments or little-to-no lift), to where we are today: an under-discussed, under-explored industry on the brink of massive growth thanks to a wonderful combination of NIL rights, negligible content creation costs, and an increasingly online population.
Put another way: online creators have gone from a trendy guerrilla marketing tactic used by spunky upstarts to a ~$21B a year industry – one which will likely reach $60B in the next 3 years (yes, that’s a bold prediction, and no I don’t think it is far-fetched at all).
The 9-0 US Supreme Court loss in the Alston case (you can read about that here) was yet another indicator that the divide between creator, athlete & celebrity is gone. Gen Z & Gen A were born online – so it only makes sense that they’ll grow up idolizing the creators they see every day, just as preceding generations idolized the creators we saw – whether that’s live or on TV (celebrities, sports stars, cause leaders). And just as Michael Jordan, Taylor Swift, Tiger Woods, Serena/Venus Williams & Beyonce (and many others) shaped the world view of millions in the 1990s and 2000s, so too will Charli D’Amelio, the Cavinder Twins, Mr. Beast, Marquise Brownlee, and many others shape the worldview of billions in the 2020s. Put simply: the line between creator & celebrity is gone. And that means the power of creators is poised to increase.
That last sentence will likely surprise some people – but I don’t think it should.
Influencers/Creators occupy a unique position in the middle of a vortex created by three trends:
Trend #1: Attention = Fuel
Attention is the fuel that drives every brand’s growth engine. The source of that attention, and the efficiency of the engine can be debated – but their role, their existence – cannot. For much of the last 30 years, a progressively larger share of that attention has been captured by online media, first websites, then social media, and now via the always-connected creative superweapons we each carry in our pockets. And as our collective attention has moved more online, brands have followed in their never-ending quest to capture and monetize that attention.
Of course, our technology has evolved at a far faster pace than humanity – while we now have the technology to serve each individual thousands of ads per day (if not more), no person has the mental capacity to remember more than a handful (or two). Result: the actual value of each online impression has declined precipitously, while the available quantity has skyrocketed. Of course, online platforms haven’t passed all of those per-impression savings onto advertisers, which is why Google, Microsoft, Meta & Apple are four of the wealthiest, most dominant companies in the history of capitalism.
This leads to a paradox: when everyone lives online, bombarded by a perpetual deluge of ads, how does a brand stand out? How do you bridge the ever-growing chasm between exposure and attention, between being on the screen and being seen? In some cases, brands accomplish this via savvy media buying, or via compelling creative, or with better data, or even by doing the unthinkable: focusing their efforts in offline media.
Whatever the strategy to capture your target audience’s attention, it’s imperative to recognize what it is: the fuel necessary for growth.
Trend #2: Incrementality of Digital Advertising
For years, we’ve all known that not all digital advertising is incremental. Try as marketers might – and some of us try far more than others – we’re still in the very same place John Wannamaker bemoaned a century ago: I know 50% of my advertising is wasted; I just don’t know which 50%. Yes, we have more data and more numbers (not all of which is accurate), but in some ways, that just adds more noise to a radio tuned to every frequency simultaneously.
In response to that, and in true marketing fashion, an entire cottage industry has popped up around third-party attribution, claiming to be able to tell any advertiser just how incremental any spend is or is not, as the case may be. I’ve shared my thoughts on those platforms here – but suffice it to say, the sizzle is far better than the steak.
None of that solves the problem, though: brands are sustained by attention. Without it, they flounder, whither and die thoroughly boring deaths (see Yahoo, TiVo, Ask Jeeves, and the like). So, brands double down. They spend more online, knowing full well not all of that spend is incremental. But when the options are “go the way of Yahoo” and “accept that 50%+ of your marketing budget will be completely ineffective”….there’s really only one choice (well, maybe).
Trend #3: Authenticity + The AI Counter-Revolution
Our third and final ingredient here is a newcomer: the rise of Generative AI platforms. If the iPhone reduced technical cost of production to near-zero, Generative AI has reduced the time cost of production commensurately.
It’s near-impossible to determine what’s real anymore – just look at this slide:
Which 2 of these 6 images were made by people, and which 4 were created by AI? When I asked a room full of 150+ marketers this question at SMX, not a single person was able to correctly identify the GenAI images. This follows trends of misinformation, disinformation, impersonation, and more. The line between real and fake has been blurred to the point where even seasoned marketers – people who have seen hundreds, thousands or even hundreds of thousands of ads – can’t tell the difference.
Naturally, one of the consequences of the GenAI craze is our (collective) swing toward authenticity vs. perfection. Perhaps no platform better captures this than Tiktok, where virtually every viral video is filmed on a phone device and chalk-full of production errors (at least, in the traditional sense). But those errors – the weird lighting, the unmade bed, the dirty dishes sitting in the sink, the weird dude in the background – are what makes those videos authentic. The same is true elsewhere – we don’t want generic content written by ChatGPT, we want something real, insightful, differentiated, personal, relatable – something human. The content that wins online isn’t the perfect, it’s the perfectly authentic; the work that strikes the right balance between accurate, accessible, compelling and controversial.
The Convergence of Three Trends & The Primacy of Audience:
If attention is necessary, and if the incrementality of paid media is progressively more expensive to capture, and if the line between delusion and reality no longer exists, where does that leave marketers? What can we do?
I’ve long believed Rand Fishkin (formerly of Moz, now of Sparktoro) had the right idea when he said, “Don’t try to sell anything. Earn the awareness, respect & trust of those who might buy.” That’s audience-building in a nutshell. Marketing today is far less about targeting and keywords than it ever was in the past; it’s more about audience, data & connection. The brands that succeed tomorrow will be the ones that do three things brilliantly well: (i) understand their audience on a deep, human level; (ii) provide outsized value to that audience, with no expectation of reciprocation and (iii) when that audience voluntarily shares their information, the brand uses it to make their experience significantly better, whether that’s through informed targeting, personalization, custom offers, community- building or all of the above.
And, the more I think about this, the more I’m convinced that the ability of brands to develop their own influencers is a superpower.
Employee-Influencers: I fully expect more brands will either hire or cultivate in-house influencers. This trend is readily observable across dozens of high-performing advertising/marketing/SEO agencies, who have leaned into using their home-grown “influencer” founders as primary business development channels.
But this isn’t an inside-baseball phenomenon. Perhaps the greatest example of this is Taylor Swift, who effectively took a wrecking ball to the traditional music industry structure, thanks in large part to the communal loyalty of “Swifties.” The end result: a multi-billion dollar music empire, a record-shattering tour (The Eras tour has shattered all previous tour records, with another few months to go); a record-shattering film (the Era Tour movie is the #1 grossing concert film of all time at $300M+, and that’s only going to go up with the re-release), over $500M in merchandise + album sales, and more.
This isn’t just Taylor Swift, either – a powerful personal brand has turned Selena Gomez into a billionaire, has helped Jessice Alba join the centi-millionaire stratosphere, and has enabled comedian-turned-movie-star-turned-mogul Ryan Reynolds to amass a truly absurd portfolio of business holdings. Of course, this isn’t limited to celebrities – Rachel Hollis, Emily Weiss (Glossier), Neil Patel (love him or hate him, he’s there), Seth Godin, Scott Galloway (Prof G Media), Nik Sharma – the list goes on and on. Personal brands aren’t restricted to the realm of celebrities, athletes and the already-rich. In fact, a progressively larger share of successful companies are led by at least one individual with a relevant, credible personal brand.
But given the rising import of authenticity, we’re rapidly approaching a world where authentic, personal brands are more important than corporate/organizational brands. This has long been the case in some industries – sports, law, media, entertainment – but, until recently, it didn’t go further. Large brands – particularly those in mass-market industries (clothing, fashion, retail, food/beverage, alcohol, nutrition, automotive, professional services, marketing/advertising, consumables, travel) overwhelmingly focus on pushing their brand to one or more target audiences, rather than creating durable points of attraction (in-house influencers/creators) that draws their target audience to them.
Going a step further, it isn’t difficult to see a world where a core consideration in hiring is not role-specific skills, but rather for perspective, creative style, and current (or potential) audience. In some ways, this echoes a point made on DTC twitter several months ago, that the single-most-valuable hire most brands could make is a skilled creator. This is a radical departure from the status quo, where reputation/contact-based hiring was relegated to elite, highly personal industries (law, banking, finance, consulting, accounting, medicine, academia, real estate), along with specific, high-level roles in other industries (celebrity hires).
We’re going to see a tectonic shift in how brands approach marketing – with a new emphasis on “influencer building” vs. brand building. There are a few reasons for this, but I want to highlight the major ones:
Ease: it’s a lot easier to build a community around a person than it is to build one around a product or a brand (if you don’t believe me, look at the billions brands have spent on “community building” and “organic social” – then look at their results from those investments). There’s a reason Elon Musk chose to build his own brand first, then intertwine it to his ventures. The same is true for Ryan Reynolds, Kim Kardashian, The Cavinder Twins, Mr. Beast, and many others.
Overcome Divisions: It’s no secret that division is on the rise; one could argue that these last few years have been among the most divisive and contentious in the modern era. From a purely pragmatic standpoint, division adds complexity to brand marketing.
from agencies building virtual influencers + selling posts to clients, to the rise of the CEO/Influencer (a model pioneered by the likes of Mark Cuban, but now widely embraced by rising commerce stars like Sean Frank of Ridge and Matthew Bertulli of Pella Case + Lomi).
On the flip side, brands will need to shift their perspective + reimagine their marketing infrastructure, from a machine ruthlessly optimized to promote the brand itself, to a support network for in-house and out-sourced creators. The brands that accept this new reality and begin to build the infrastructure necessary to succeed will win tomorrow. Those that cling to the past will be left in the past. It’s really, truly that simple.
What can you do:
There’s a fundamentally different creative muscle that brands need to build to thrive in this “new” paradigm. At the most basic level, I think this is a shift from “promoting the brand” to “building influence” – though the forms that it takes will vary and evolve.
And while the notion of “influencer” is traditionally associated with D2C companies, this isn’t limited to eCommerce. This is an ecosystem-wide thing:
- Agencies are rapidly building out their in-house “talent development” capacities. It may have started with CEOs + Leadership (Taylor Holiday from Common Thread Co is a great example), but it has not stopped there. Agencies like Tinuiti have aggressively hired “influential” people in a variety of spaces to build out their teams, while increasing investment in talent development + thought leadership positioning.
- Sports teams are hiring (and developing) influencers – a fantastic example (but hardly the only one) is Andrea Helfrich, who started as an on-camera reporter and in-arena host for the Philadelphia Flyers, but has leveraged her online influence to build an agency, host major music festivals, consult on community building for niche brands, and serve as an influencer across the beauty, fashion, interior design and music spaces. This has activated new audiences for the Flyers, while enabling Helfrich to build her personal brand using the resources available to major sports franchises.
- Traditional media (particularly in politics) has embraced the idea of the reporter/influencer, to the point where most standard reporter contracts expressly permit book deals + other paid engagements. In fact, it barely registers on the “outrage-o-meter” when reporters deliberately omit pertinent facts from their reporting in order to save juicy bits for their forthcoming books.
- Law & Accounting firms are featuring their professionals more than ever before – and we’re starting to see the emergence of companies founded on the niche celebrity of an online account, like the Investments Lawyer leveraging his Twitter following to start a niche firm.
Tech companies are touting their experts in multiple different thought leadership capacities (to give props to Rand, he was among the first CEOs to truly embrace this type of thought leadership with the Whiteboard Fridays series) – whether that’s putting them out on platforms like Twitter and TikTok, or allowing their R&D teams to publish their research publicly, or something else entirely.
Let’s go one step further: this isn’t just about marketing or business development; it’s about talent attraction. The brands that attract premier Gen Z / Gen A talent will be the ones that have both the track record and the infrastructure to incubate, cultivate and accelerate those employee’s personal brands. That may sound crazy, but we’re already seeing it – from Emily in Paris to companies like Common Thread Collective and Fermat building massive platforms, then using those platforms to elevate their team members.
What those companies – and the ten people mentioned at the beginning of this article – realize is simple: the power of personal, authentic brands is astronomical – and it will only increase as the volume and velocity of content accelerates.
In a world full of noise, influencers/creators offer a signal to those within their sphere of influence. In an online environment everyone has been programmed to distrust, they are trustworthy. In an increasingly fractured, convoluted online world, they are ambassadors to increasingly divided, discrete audiences.
This is a radically different function than what most organizations are accustomed to doing – and most are ill-equipped to do it. Creating a platform that can identify, cultivate and deploy influencers to promote a brand is light-years from the traditional role of marketing – but, in the immortal words of Taleb: “Evolve or Die.”
That’s all for this week!
Cheers,
Sam
