I didn't make it to the Cannes Lions Festival this year though I've been several times and had the honor of serving on the Branded Content Jury a while back. It was an awesome experience being locked up for the better part of a week with 20+ accomplished creatives from all over the world. Trust me, they take "judging advertising" very seriously. But I was a bit of an outcast. I kept focusing on outcomes - CTR's, audience response, engagement, comments (that's all we had to work with at the time) while most of the judges were content with creative vision, cultural resonance and intent. In the last several years, as I became more focused on the creator world, the business of advertising just felt less relevant.

Unlike conventional celebrities, creators are business owners. Creators are "creatives "yes but they care just as much about outcomes. When you are focused on what is actually working - i.e. what audiences respond to vs what you believe in your heart is right and/or righteous you move faster and develop more of a balance between emotion and pragmatism.

Up until recently Cannes was not that concerned with the role of creators and influencers. But this year a lot of creators and creator industry peeps made the trek. One because there was an organized creator track at Cannes (I believe for the first time) and also because for the first time in many years, Cannes Lions and Vidcon weren't held in the same week. Here are some takeaways:

Creators as Media Brands

Advertisers have been running influencer campaigns for years now and have begun to carve out a small percentage of their spend for influencer marketing in their annual budgets. They do this because it works and because the big influencer marketing companies - Influential, Viral Nation, CreatorIQ, PearPop have made it more about buying and measuring media than about connecting with a specific personality. This is smart as it got the $$$ flowing. But what about creator direct brand partnerships? Colin & Samir - the reigning creator business insiders said in their Cannes podcast that advertisers were open and ready but that they were interested in "creator brands." ie - MrBeast, Jake Paul, Emma Chamberlain, Alix Earle, etc.

Here's the conundrum. In order to build a brand you need depth and breadth. Multiple platform audiences AND off platform revenue streams. While the talk in Cannes seemed to still be about creator advertising and media partnerships, the conversation at Vidcon was very different. Very few brands attended this year (more on this in another post). Instead the creator economy business conversation was in full tilt: the best merch partners and learnings, affiliate sales, product development, subscriber models, platform strategy, sustainability, succession and exit models. These are the building blocks of a valuable business. There was less mention of direct advertising deals, brand partnerships and how to build them. As recently as 3 years ago, brand deals were considered to be low hanging fruit for creators looking to boost revenue. Now, some creators seem to be skipping brand deals all together.

The message to brands? Creators are moving on. While brands are mulling over their creator media options, creators (because they are business minded) are following the $$$. And the $$$ it seems is in building deeper relationships with audiences and consumers not with brands. Other than for the very top echelon of creators, brand partnerships can be a lot of work - high touch, time consuming and hard to repeat. Even if the margin is there, business sustainability is increasingly important as creator businesses get bigger and the truth is creators are finding (like other digital media businesses) that audience based monetization is more sustainable and predictable than advertising.

Jim Louderback in his insightful weekly creator economy post goes farther, arguing that the Peak Creator Era is over and that brands and audiences are moving on too. We now have lots of micro niche creators with super loyal audiences, spurred on by the Tiktok algo. Brands are more interested in these niche influencers because they show measurable returns and creators have figured out how to monetize a smaller audience of superfans. Youtube's longtime trends guru Kevin Allocca shared new culture trends at Vidcon to back this up. Net, net: super fandom is on the rise. "Casual fans may just consume media, but super fans routinely create media about the object of their fandom, and often spend money on it...." says Allocca. In short, the bigger the fan, the more content they are likely to consume and the more content they are likely to create themselves about what they consume. And that leads to spending more $$$ with their favorite creators to support their fandom. You can download a copy of Youtube's latest culture trends report here.

Back to "Cannaheim," its great that the Cannes Lions festival is now all in on creators but our French friends don't seem to know where creators are headed. For all of its challenges, at least Vidcon got creator businesses right this year. Kudos!