🚍🎥 Creators are driving the digital bus
Issue #354
I gave a talk last week about the Creator Economy, about how it is US$250bn in size, by revenue, how there are 50m people participating in it (way bigger than the film and television industry) and so on. I also discussed the structural shifts driving the creator economy. Principal among these is audience demand for authentic, relatable content. This isn’t a trend like superhero movies. This is a fundamental upending of the media ecosystem. It occurred to me that creators are driving the creator economy. And, it’s the human element of their work that audiences crave. Not bad, right. Happy Thursday, Simon.
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Creators - #1 growth job in digital
A new report has identified creators as the largest and fastest-growing job segment within the digital economy. Since 2020 the number of full-time creators out there has grown to 1.5 million, outpacing the traditional media job growth by five times. What’s driven this dramatic growth? Well a few things. There's been a shift of ad budgets to digital, platforms and tech empowering the creator, the lack of traditional gatekeepers in the industry, increasing formalisation of the creator economy and the building of closer relationships between creators and their audience. With the global creator economy estimated at USD 250 billion, 2024 has been dubbed “the year creators took over”.
How do you get content to stand out?
When it comes to getting content to stand out from a very crowded market, many creators rely on the same tools: the platform it's distributed on, the style of copywriting used and the design of this content. Every creator tweaks these variables but this issue is they don’t necessarily give you an advantage. The unique aspect to your content centres around you and your experiences. They can include insights gained from your clients, learnings from your own experiments, your unique point of view, or concepts you've come up with late at night. It’s not always about flashy ideas your audience is generally after original thinking, personal insights and actual problem solving.
Pinterest winning visual search
For fashion consumers, Pinterest is becoming the favoured search engine. A recent survey has found 36% of consumers start their search on Pinterest rather than Google. This could explain why Pinterest introduced new visual search features designed to enhance the user experience, especially around fashion. It’s a win for fashion businesses who claim they receive 80% more engagement on Pinterest than other search platforms. Visual search is made for fashion, and Pinterest is embracing the interaction users have with the images they find. It might not work as well for B2B marketing, but all content needs to find a platform that works for it.
Cool Tools
This webcam from Insta360 looks like it will become the new standard in a space (webcams, who'd have thought) that has been lagging. Isn't it always the case? You have to wait for a real innovation to show you what you've been missing.
Hot Tips
Adobe Firefly expanded to handle images, video, audio, and design elements in one place. With the new Image Model 4 and 4 Ultra, there's plenty to test. Worth trying: when the results look generic, add specific lighting cues to your prompts (golden hour, backlit, etc.). And for video, I find this helps to work from a reference image first, then extend that same style into motion—keeps things more coherent than starting from scratch.
Viral Hits
“Ruby-chan, hai? Nani ga suki?” If that sugar-high line has crashed onto your feed, welcome to the latest sound everyone’s borrowing. It comes from AiScReam, a Japanese fictional idol group. The formula is simple: play the track, add the cutesy wave, show literally anything. The clash between the hyper-kawaii vocals and whatever’s on screen—appliances, dinosaurs, 18-wheelers—makes the clip pop. Even Microsoft’s in on it. Expect to hear it a lot before the week’s out.
Stuff from us
B2B animation has its own quiet rewards. For Visa CEMEA, we distilled complex financial pipelines into a sleek, blueprint-inspired explainer. The brief called for a B2B rental collections case study with voiceover but no talking heads. With Visa's creative runway, we delivered something that's clear, captivating, and lets the complexity breathe without overwhelming.
$50 to make me laugh
Last week we launched our inaugural reader survey. It didn’t get one response - so much for engagement. So this week I’m changing tack. Send us a response and if you can make me laugh while reading it I’ll send you $50. Scouts honour.