The two-tier creator economy means it’s time for brands to rethink their strategy 

The creator economy is no longer the digital Wild West it once was, where brands and creators had to navigate clunky partnerships and trial-and-error strategies. 

Over the 15 years I’ve been working in it, the creator economy has evolved from experimental to established. Creators have matured, platforms have diversified, and the ways brands measure success have shifted dramatically. The creator economy is now a sophisticated ecosystem with real rules, structures, and expectations.  

There’s one thing that is striking about what’s happened over the past couple of years, what I classify as the emergence of a two-tier creator economy. This has been caused by the rise of premium creators, a distinct tier of professionals who treat content creation as a full-time career rather than a side hustle. 

These premium creators invest in production quality, audience engagement, and multi-platform presence – they often require bigger budgets from brands as well. On the other side we have the traditional side-hustlers, aspiring creators – who juggle their content work with full-time jobs or other commitments. 

This split makes a fundamental shift in how brands need to think about creator marketing. Premium creators are commanding higher fees because they’re not just dabbling in the field, they’re running professional operations. That means the way in which brands measure the success of creator marketing, and even how they select the creators they choose to work with, needs to change.  

A key part of this is follower counts. For years these have been the north star of creator marketing, but in a landscape where there are over 300 million creators, that number at the top of a profile no longer holds the weight it once did. 

Instead, I would encourage brands to think about engagement metrics. A creator with one million followers might have low engagement rates and minimal impact. Meanwhile, a smaller creator with a 10%+ engagement rate could be delivering a far more dedicated and active audience.  

Metrics like comments, shares and saves and engagement percentages – not to mention loyalty indicators like Watch Time or paying Substack subscribers or Patreon supporters – are all new benchmarks of the depth of influence a creator has that brands should be tracking, both on their owned social channels or with creators they work with 

If you’re thinking about working with a premium creator, you have to think beyond the follower count, and think about the different ways you can collaborate with them. 

If you’re a brand looking to pick a creator to work with, you need to take into consideration organic engagement rates that are 4% – 15% , high share rates, watch times (particularly for longer-form platforms like YouTube) and whether the creator has a significant audience overlap across different platforms, as this indicates if they have an active and engaged fan base.  

The recent election in the US also calls into question how we value creators in general and proves why not all impressions are created equal. As the Hollywood Reporter explained, this was the first “Influencer Election” with both candidates heavily leaning into creators during their campaigns. 

However, and ultimately crucially, Donald Trump chose to favour long-form creators such as Joe Rogan while Kamala Harris tended to collaborate with short-form creators, viral remixes and quick videos. As Brendan Gahan, CEO of Creator Authority, explained in the article: “The bonds creators have with their audiences is what drives meaningful engagement and short-form creators just can’t achieve those bonds to the same degree.” 

The rise of premium creators should also force brands to rethink not only who they partner with, but how those partnerships work. The differentiation between paid, owned and earned channels are an indication of this, as previously creator marketing would most likely fall into the paid and earned buckets. Today’s creators are blurring the lines between all three, and bringing in more craft elements of creative development, copywriting or production. 

As an example, for a recent campaign we did with a client, we brought a premium creator into a writers room, and scripted and shot 8 episodes that we distributed across paid, owned and earned channels for the brand, as well as sitting on the creators channels.    

That’s because a creator partnership done well should offer a brand the opportunity to amplify campaigns across multiple channels and give them multiple bites of the cherry. A single partnership can span paid social ads, organic posts, and owned content like newsletters – if you’re only thinking about premium creators in terms of one channel you’ll likely find your return on investment is suboptimal. 

Jamie Searle

Working with premium creators also shouldn’t be a one-and-done deal. Creators thrive on long-term partnerships that allow them to integrate a brand into their content authentically and allow them to access financial security. 

For brands, this means moving away from transactional thinking and instead investing in relationships that deliver sustained value and can work with the brand to stay connected to culture. After all, you wouldn’t make just a single ad and think you were done with the campaign. 

This is also how brands can ensure they’re maximising the return on engagement on their creator marketing budgets – by figuring out how to slot them into their entire marketing system and treating them with the same strategic rigour as any other marketing initiative. Premium creators particularly can offer strategy to businesses – and this often comes as an inclusion of their heftier price tag as well.  

The rise of premium creators is a huge opportunity for brands. Premium creators offer not just access to audiences but credibility, creativity, and content that can be leveraged in many ways across paid, earned and owned. 

But to unlock that potential, brands must embrace the multi-faceted role of creators as collaborators, not just promoters, and measure their engagement rather than potential audience.  

Most importantly, recognise that this new tier of premium creators isn’t a passing trend – it’s the future of creator marketing. 

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