Creators are moving beyond building audiences to running actual businesses, taking equity stakes in startups and owning their audiences directly. At Cannes, speakers discussed how brands like HubSpot are partnering with creators on their terms, and predicted legacy media giants like Disney will figure out YouTube within five years.
While everyone was networking in Cannes, I got to do an incredibly cool activation with creators HubSpot Media. We turned a car ride up to dinner into a rolling interview studio, and I got to sit down with some brilliant minds in the creator space. Now, given the creator economy has come to dominate Cannes, I had to ask, what's next? Where's this all headed? What's the next big thing?
Creators starting to invest more directly in companies. And obviously we've been seeing creators take equity positions in companies, but as they become a little bit more financially available, being able to actually invest and be part of these early-stage companies and be part of their growth and help accelerate from the ground up.
Where creators can really own their audiences, it's going to become more important.
I think in the next 5 years, people really discount legacy media and their ability to activate on platforms like YouTube. And I think the next 5 years we'll see that disproven and we'll see legacy media, especially companies that have really good IP that are known to activate their IP in really cool ways like Disney, to really start to get YouTube and understanding in meaningful ways.
Now, shout out to creators HubSpot Media who made this amazing trip to Cannes and this collaboration possible. They're doing and have been doing amazing creator-first partnerships, bringing the sort of brand-creator collab energy to B2B that more companies should be chasing. Click on the link below to check out more Off the Record interviews with creators at Cannes.
