Creators are no longer just promoting products – they’re launching their own and disrupting entire industries in the process. In this op-ed, Alex Reid, founder at Amplify, explores how brands can adapt to stay relevant in a creator-led industry.
Once upon a time, brands called the shots. They dictated trends, controlled the marketplace, and decided what products we needed. But a quiet revolution has been brewing, and today, some of the most powerful forces in consumer culture aren’t sitting in boardrooms – they’re sitting in front of ring lights.
Here’s the truth. The greatest threat to your brand’s survival isn’t your competitor – it’s a creator with a smartphone and a loyal audience.
Creators, once relegated to just influencer campaigns and brand ambassadorships, are no longer just content with promoting products – they’re launching their own. And they’re making bank.
This trend has been slowly bubbling away for a while, but recently, we’ve seen real growth in the number of creators who are able to take their brand into their own hands and launch a product. Yes, there’s KSI and Logan Paul’s PRIME sports drink, but both creators were so widely known and popular that, as far as creators go, they were pretty much household names.
On the other hand we have creators like ‘The Clean Girl’, a TikTok creator whose niche was, oddly enough, cleaning gravestones. This is a far cry from mainstream influencer aesthetics that you might expect would propel someone to online fame.
But The Clean Girl’s videos hit a unique niche in the market, one that it’s safe to assume no one saw coming, and drew in a community of around 3.6 million. Before long, she turned her expertise into a tangible product with a Magic Foaming Spray on the way. The result? A successful brand born from an authentic connection with her followers.
This isn’t an isolated incident. From beauty gurus creating their own makeup lines to fitness influencers launching activewear, creators are no longer just the middlemen between brands and audiences – they are the brands. And traditional companies, no matter how well-established they are, are feeling the pressure.
The reason why creators have an edge that most brands can’t replicate is simple: trust.
Creators have built their businesses on deep, personal connections with their audiences. They know what their followers care about because they interact with them every day, responding in real-time to feedback and evolving with their needs.
That’s why their followers see them as peers, not corporations. They don’t just sell products, they invite their audiences into their lives. When a creator launches a product, it feels personal – it’s not just “marketing”, it’s a recommendation from a friend.
And let’s not underestimate the speed at which creators move. They don’t have to navigate the layers of bureaucracy that slow down big brands. Instead, they can identify a need, create a product, and get it to market in record time.
The thing is, brand-creator partnerships and collaborations have existed ever since creators became an established industry. But creators, thus far, have primarily been used for amplification and not necessarily creation.
What this recent wave tells us is that creators don’t necessarily need brands anymore. It’s easier than ever for anyone to start selling their own e-commerce product without a bricks and mortar presence or complex supply chain.
It’s an existential challenge for traditional brands. If creators continue to bypass brands entirely, the latter risk being rendered obsolete.
That’s why brands have to step it up a notch. Creators are simply too agile and powerful for brands to just use them to post about products. Instead, partnerships need to be about co-creation, with creators brought on board to provide strategy, insights and their authenticity to brands.
I know, from the brand’s perspective, that there’s a fear of handing over their IP or their creative control. But for any product collaboration, it should be about equality and transparency on both sides. It’s not even about partnering with creators with followings in the millions. What brands really have to look out for is the loyalty and engagement rates of creators – these are the metrics to truly judge a partnership on.
Another good piece of guidance for brands looking to enter these partnerships is to see how mobile a creator’s audience is. Do they have a following across different platforms? Has this following already shown a willingness to purchase merch or other simple products from the creator? These are all things to look out for.
These kinds of partnerships also can provide a competitive edge for brands who are looking to distinguish themselves from their competitors. If these brands are trying to launch a new product as a conglomerate, they should be looking at how they can partner with the right creator that has an enthusiasm in the space that you can tap into.
There are obviously some industries that are more prone to this kind of disruption than others, with FMCG especially coming to mind. If brands in this space are smart and they find the right creator, they can build a billion-dollar brand.
In a world where authenticity is the currency of success, creators have the upper hand. Brands need to stop trying to copy the creator model and start learning from it.
The companies that will thrive in the next decade are the ones that embrace the creator-led future, not resist it.
