Markerly Insights • The Creator Economy
How creators are building the next generation of consumer brands.
The most successful influencers today are no longer just your stereotypical content creators. As the influencer marketing landscape becomes increasingly saturated, many creators are expanding beyond social media and into entrepreneurship, business leadership, and mainstream media and entertainment. What starts as an audience online is increasingly becoming the foundation for consumer brands, leadership roles, podcast empires, film, and reality TV careers.
This evolution is driven by a unique advantage: creators understand audiences better than most traditional founders and executives because they have built their businesses around direct, daily engagement with consumers. Years spent strategically building communities online have given them firsthand insight into what captures attention, drives conversation, and influences their audiences’ purchasing decisions. That knowledge has helped creators launch some of today’s most culturally relevant brands while also opening doors to opportunities across film, television, publishing, podcasts, and live entertainment.
As creators continue to expand their reach beyond social media, they are becoming more than influencers. They are launching businesses, stepping into founder and creative leadership roles, and building brands that increasingly shape culture and consumer behavior.
From Sponsored Posts to CEO
Creator-led brands are no longer a niche trend — they’re taking over a wide variety of industries in the consumer market. From skincare to makeup to body care, influencers are turning their loyal audiences into thriving businesses. What started as creators filming “GRWM” videos, skincare routines, or favorites videos has turned into creators owning their own beauty brands.
In many cases, these influencer-led companies have begun outperforming and dethroning the very brands that once paid them for sponsored posts.
Why are these new brands performing so well and growing at such rapid rates? Because creators understand something traditional brands are still trying to figure out: relevance. More than 40 influencer-led companies have surpassed $100 million in annual revenue.1 Influencers like Alix Earle, Hailey Bieber, and Michelle Phan know exactly what performs well on social media and how to consistently keep their products in the conversation. Whether it’s showing up organically in a PR haul, being casually mentioned in a “get ready with me,” or strategically pushed through paid creator partnerships, these products are everywhere.
For example, Hailey Bieber’s Rhode skincare line launched in Sephora stores across the country just 3 years after its initial debut. Sephora registered 2 million organic searches for Rhode2 before the launch and generated around $15 million in the first week of sales.3 This June, she launched her highly anticipated Pocket Blush bronzer, partnering with creators like Golloria and Toni Bravo to help refine the formula and ensure an inclusive shade range. The launch further proved how her years on social media have shaped her approach to building a brand, keeping Rhode consistently top of mind through creator collaboration, cultural relevance, and products designed with her audience in mind.
Years — and millions — spent generating buzz before trust exists.
Brand identity, trust, and demand exist long before launch day.
For decades, building a successful brand followed a familiar formula: create a great product, spend heavily on marketing, and hope customer acquisition stays strong. Influencer-created brands have completely flipped that model by starting with an audience, then letting attention guide their strategy. Brand identity, trust, and community are already established long before launch day. These brands leverage the attention they have already accumulated as a strategic asset rather than using a large portion of marketing spend on generating awareness. Now, audience engagement and attention can achieve what traditional marketing budgets once did — reducing customer acquisition costs while creating a more direct and authentic connection with consumers.
While traditional brands spend years and millions of dollars generating buzz and hype, creator brands enter the market with both already established. Their audiences are already emotionally invested in the brand and feel like they have been a part of the journey from the beginning, as the product is an extension of a creator with whom they have already established trust and a parasocial relationship through years of consistent online engagement. This close relationship also gives creators a distinct advantage when developing products. They have firsthand insight into what consumers value, what frustrates them, and what’s missing from their side of the internet. In most cases, followers have spent years asking creators for product recommendations or even encouraging them to launch something of their own, meaning demand often exists long before a brand officially launches.
Influencer-led brands aren’t just succeeding because of fame — they’re succeeding because creators understand modern consumers better than most traditionally structured companies ever could.
In many ways, influencer-founded brands have rewritten the rules of brand-building by establishing brand identity and community well before launch day, while traditionally structured companies still rely primarily on conventional advertising, market research, and paid media to build customer relationships. As social media continues to shift how people discover and shop for products, the line between creator and founder will only continue to blur.
A Greater Sphere of Influence
Audiences built over years of daily engagement become launch pads. Rhode, Chamberlain Coffee, Parke, and Reale Actives all entered the market with trust, identity, and demand already established — flipping the traditional acquisition model on its head.
Tap a node to explore each orbit →
Leadership
The most influential personalities are no longer limiting themselves to sponsorships or ambassador roles. Instead, creators and media personalities are increasingly stepping into positions traditionally reserved for founders, executives, and creative directors. Years spent building direct relationships with audiences have equipped them with something many brands struggle to develop on their own: a deep understanding of consumer behavior, cultural trends, and community engagement. As a result, creators are becoming valuable strategic partners capable of shaping products, brand positioning, and business direction from the inside.
Examples of this shift can be seen across a wide range of creator-founded brands and leadership positions. Tap into each one:
Alix Earle recently launched her skincare brand, Reale Actives, leveraging the trust and authenticity she cultivated with millions of followers to enter the highly competitive beauty market.4 Earle has been deeply involved in its development, helping shape everything from product formulation and brand positioning to the marketing strategy and creator partnerships. She has drawn on her own acne journey and conversations with her audience to identify unmet consumer needs and inform the brand’s direction.
Rather than simply endorsing products, Earle is building her own business ecosystem through ownership, strategic partnerships, and expanded media opportunities. In addition to serving as a partner and investor in SipMargs and Poppi, she has continued to grow her presence in mainstream entertainment — most recently appearing on Dancing with the Stars and filming her own Netflix series with her family. Her career trajectory reflects how today’s creators are transforming audience influence into long-term business ventures and broader cultural relevance.
Influencer and podcaster Jake Shane was named Chief Creative Officer of Katjes Gummies, where he will help define the brand’s voice and marketing direction. Shane has emphasized humor as a cornerstone of the brand’s identity, while Katjes cited his ability to bring unexpected, culturally relevant ideas that resonate with younger consumers.5
Emma Chamberlain transformed her online influence into Chamberlain Coffee, turning the audience she built as a comedic lifestyle YouTuber into a successful consumer brand. Chamberlain is actively involved in its creative direction, helping shape the brand’s identity, product development, and marketing. Her involved approach has allowed Chamberlain Coffee to maintain an authentic voice that reflects the personality and values her audience has come to love. At the same time, she has expanded her presence far beyond social media, partnering with West Elm on a furniture collection and growing her influence within the luxury fashion space.
Chelsea Kramer built Parke around her own aesthetic and close connection with her audience. In Parke’s case, community has become a central business asset, with in-person pop-ups allowing customers to engage directly with both the founder and the brand.6
The trend extends beyond consumer product brands. Lilly Singh, an entertainer and actress, recently joined the Toronto Tempo ownership group while taking on the role of Chief Hype Officer, helping build excitement and fan engagement around the WNBA franchise.7 The appointment reflects a broader recognition that creators and those in the entertainment industry bring more than just reach.
As creators continue to establish themselves as founders, investors, and creative executives, they are increasingly stepping into leadership roles once reserved for traditional marketing executives — and demonstrating that they can excel at it. Their success shows how a deep understanding of audience behavior, culture, and storytelling has become just as valuable as conventional corporate experience in shaping the future of modern brands.
Culture
The influencer-to-entrepreneur pipeline doesn’t stop at product and brand launches. Today’s most successful creators are expanding into mainstream media, entertainment, and cultural institutions, cementing themselves as public figures far beyond the platforms where they got their start. This crossover both validates their personal brand and creates new monetization lanes that no brand deal alone could offer. The result is a new class of multi-hyphenate public figures who are simultaneously influencer, founder, entertainer, and media personality.
One of the clearest signals of this shift is who’s holding the microphone at culture’s biggest moments. Emma Chamberlain has not only grown her business and brand presence, but has also served as Vogue’s red carpet correspondent at the Met Gala every year since 2021 — returning in 2026 as one of four co-hosts of the Vogue livestream broadcast live on YouTube and TikTok. This was a deliberate institutional choice by one of the world’s most prestigious media brands to hand the mic to a creator who speaks the language of the next generation of fashion consumers.8 The move sparked conversation around creators increasingly occupying spaces once exclusively reserved for traditional celebrities and entertainment press, such as the Grammy Awards and the Academy Awards, just to name a few. Traditional gatekeepers are now navigating a new reality where a creator with 10 million TikTok followers commands the same cultural real estate as an A-list actor on a press tour.
Creators went from not having a seat at the table to running the whole event.
When Jake Shane launched Therapuss in January 2024, it quickly became one of the top shows on Spotify and landed on Apple Podcasts’ 20th anniversary list.9 The show has recently joined Netflix. His guest roster — Ed Sheeran, Katy Perry, Charli XCX, Glen Powell, Lorde, and Joe Jonas — reads like a late-night booking sheet, which would have been unthinkable for a creator-hosted show just five years ago. Shane isn’t an isolated case. Alex Cooper’s Call Her Daddy has drawn a similarly A-list clientele, proving that creator-hosted podcasts pulling top-tier talent isn’t a one-hit wonder. In 2025, Shane was named to TIME’s 100 Creators list — a signal that the industry now views the creator podcast format as a legitimate media vertical.10 His transition from creator to creative executive and entertainment personality highlights how today’s influencers are leveraging their audience-building expertise across multiple industries. Legacy acts are actively choosing creator podcasts over traditional press circuits because the audience skews younger, the conversations tend to be more candid, and the cultural reach is more precise.
Television and streaming are the next frontier, but the crossover doesn’t stop there. Influencers are now appearing in traditional commercials alongside legacy celebrity endorsers, occupying ad space that was once exclusively reserved for Hollywood talent. Alix Earle and Jake Shane both appeared in Super Bowl commercials — arguably the most coveted and high-profile advertising real estate in the world. Alix Earle’s Netflix series Earle Meets World, premiering in 2026, will follow her family and friend group in what Netflix describes as an unfiltered look at her life.11 The series is produced by Fulwell Entertainment — the same company behind Hulu’s The Kardashians — a pairing that signals just how seriously the industry is taking creator-led content. Earle isn’t alone. The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives, built entirely from TikTok’s MomTok community, became Hulu’s most-watched unscripted season premiere of 2024, has since run four seasons, and already has an Orange County spinoff in development.12
Emma Chamberlain takes the mic as Vogue’s Met Gala red carpet correspondent — a creator inside fashion’s most guarded institution.
Therapuss launches and tops Spotify’s charts; The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives becomes Hulu’s most-watched unscripted premiere of the year.
Jake Shane makes TIME’s 100 Creators list; Rhode’s Sephora debut hits $15M in week one; Lilly Singh joins the Toronto Tempo ownership group.
Chamberlain co-hosts Vogue’s Met Gala livestream; Earle Meets World premieres on Netflix; creators headline Super Bowl ad slots.
Every mainstream crossover moment compounds a creator’s cultural authority, and cultural authority is directly tied to brand value. A creator who interviews A-listers at the Met Gala, hosts a top-charting podcast, and stars in a Netflix series isn’t just an influencer anymore. They’re an entertainment brand. And what makes this crossover possible is the same thing that makes their businesses successful: these creators built their platforms by developing a deep, firsthand understanding of what their audiences want, how content performs, and what drives cultural conversation online. It’s precisely what makes them compelling to Netflix, Vogue, and Spotify.
The best creator partnerships of the next five years won’t live on TikTok and Instagram alone. They’ll span podcasts, streaming, live events, and red carpets — making omnichannel thinking not just a best practice, but a prerequisite for staying relevant.
Conclusion
In 2026, the creator-to-entrepreneur shift has proven itself to be more than a trend. It’s a structural change in how brands are built and how cultural moments are created. Creators are no longer waiting for the industry to make room for them. They’re launching companies, stepping into C-suites, hosting top-charting podcasts, landing Netflix deals, and showing up in Super Bowl commercials. The audiences they spent years building online didn’t just fuel their influence — they became the foundation for entire business empires.
What makes this generation of creator-entrepreneurs different isn’t just their reach. It’s their instinct. They understood their audiences long before any brand brief or focus group could tell them what consumers wanted. That’s the advantage that helped Rhode outsell beauty giants, put Emma Chamberlain behind the mic at the Met Gala, and turned a TikTok community into Hulu’s most-watched unscripted premiere of 2024.
The brands and agencies that recognize this shift early are the ones positioned to win. Whether you’re looking to partner with the next generation of creator-entrepreneurs or build a campaign strategy that meets culture where it actually lives, understanding how to navigate the creator economy isn’t optional anymore.
Real • Relevant • Responsible
Markerly has been building authentic creator partnerships since 2012 — strategy, vetted creators, content, activation, and real-time measurement.
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