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ForYouTopia: Our ideal creator landscape
Creators aren't the channel anymore, they are the strategy now. Jake Shane is CMO of Katjes, Pien Laat Haar Eten Zien has created three bestselling cookbooks, and Stan Molemaker built YoungSparks from scratch, a jewellery brand, launched on the back of an existing audience and years of showing up consistently. These aren't just side projects, these are businesses.
The creator didn't just influence the purchase, they became the brand.
So what does that mean for you?
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Where to put your budget
For years, the model was simple: the brand has a product, sets up a campaign, and finds a creator. The creator then posts, and the brand gets reach. Transactional. That model is dead, and the brands still running it are already behind.
The numbers confirm it: Unilever, one of the biggest advertisers on the planet, is reallocating up to 50% of its digital and ad budget away from traditional media and toward social media, content creators, and brand advocates. That's not a test, that's a structural shift. When a company of that scale moves that kind of money, it's not following a trend. It's recognising something that you already know from the inside: audiences built by creators are different.
loyalty that doesn't show up in a CPM rate.
Your audience wasn't acquired through a paid campaign, It was earned. Post by post, video by video. Through your personality, your consistency, your genuine relationships built over time. That kind of loyalty doesn't show up in a CPM rate.
When you recommend something, it doesn't feel like an ad, it feels like a tip from someone they trust. That's the parasocial bond, and it's arguably the most valuable asset in modern marketing. Not because the product is better, but because the story is real. No brand can manufacture that in a boardroom. But you've already built it.
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The media house shift
The smartest creators aren't just making content anymore, they're building media houses. Production teams, owned formats, multichannel strategies where TikTok drives discovery, YouTube builds depth, and Substack locks in the most loyal slice of the audience.
This is the extreme content economy playing out in real time. Short-form and long-form aren't competing, they're working together. A 15-second hook brings someone in, a 45-minute YouTube video makes them stay. And once someone's sat with you for 45 minutes? They're not a follower anymore, they're a fan.
Depth creates loyalty, and l;oyalty creates value. And value is what brands should be paying for. So stop measuring yourself by follower count. The question isn't how many people follow you, it's how deep your community goes.
choose your battles
One deep brand partnership beats ten loose posts, every time. A brand showing up once in your feed is noise, a brand woven into your story, that's culture. And culture is what both you and the brand actually want.
Be selective. The creators winning long-term aren't the ones with the most brand deals, they're the ones with the fewest, best ones, the partnerships that make sense to their audience, that feel like a natural extension of who they are. Your authenticity is your most valuable asset. Every deal that doesn't fit costs you a little of it.
Authenticity is now the scarcest resource on the internet.
But this goes both ways.
If you're serious about thism it's time to start thinking differently about what you're building.
Stop asking what the algorithm wants, instead, start asking what your audience would actually love. Because algorithm-pleasing content is everywhere. It looks the same, it sounds the same, and it disappears just as fast. But your personality doesn't, that's the thing nobody can replicate, not another creator, not a brand, and not AI.
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build a universe
The creators who will matter in five years aren't the ones who posted the most. They're the ones who built a universe, a world that's entirely theirs. A community that actively chooses them, not because they appeared on a For You Page once, but because they watched all of the 45-minute YouTube videos. That's the difference between reach and loyalty, and loyalty is worth so much more.
Longform is where that loyalty gets built. YouTube and podcasts are the new third place. The space where your audience shows up for you on purpose, and where your personality gets room to breathe. It's where a viewer becomes a fan.
But here's the part most creators skip: invest in yourself before you expect brands to invest in you. Your content quality, your personal brand, the way you show up, that's your pitch deck. You are only as high-end as you present yourself. The creators landing the best brand deals aren't waiting to be discovered. They've built something so clear, consistent, and genuinely theirs that brands come to them.
The creator economy is worth $234 billion today. It's heading for $528 billion by 2030. You're already on the right side of that wave. The question is how intentionally you're going to ride it.
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Our role in this shift
We're not watching this from the sidelines, we're right at the center of it. We believe the next generation of media isn't being built in broadcast studios or agency boardrooms. It's being built by creators like you. And the ones who will define culture, who will build audiences that brands would pay anything to reach, are the ones who have the infrastructure to match their ambition.
That's what we build: media powerhouses. Creators who own their format, command their audience, and show up across every platform with intention. Because a creator with the right strategy behind them isn't just an influencer, they're a media brand that compounds.
The shift is already happening. So let's start building together.
WHAT'S IN IT FOR THE MARKETER?
Stop thinking about creators as distribution. Start thinking about them as business partners. Find creators whose world your brand genuinely fits. Go deep, not wide. Treat the partnership like a collaboration, not a transaction.
The brands that will define the next decade aren't the ones that spent the most on reach, they're the ones that invested early in the right creators and grew alongside them. The creator is the powerhouse. The only question is whether your brand is smart enough to be in the room.
