The influencer, it seems, has been reading the org charts.
A growing cohort of top digital creators are doing something that would have seemed improbable even a few years ago: they are building holding companies around themselves, complete with chief executives, diversified revenue streams and business structures that do not depend entirely on the continued visibility of the person whose name is on the door.
It is, in its way, a logical next step for an industry that has spent the last decade professionalizing at speed. The creator who once posted videos from a bedroom and waited for the brand deals to arrive now employs a chief operating officer and thinks about intellectual property licensing. The bedroom, one assumes, has been upgraded as well.
The model echoes, perhaps deliberately, the structure that has governed Madison Avenue for decades. The large agency holding companies — WPP, Omnicom, Interpublic and their peers — have long operated on the principle that diversification provides stability, and that no single client or capability should represent an existential risk to the enterprise. Creators, it appears, have been taking notes.
(Whether the creators have also adopted the holding companies' enthusiasm for quarterly earnings calls and reorganization announcements remains to be seen.)
The shift reflects a broader maturation of what the industry has taken to calling the creator economy, a phrase that has the virtue of being accurate and the drawback of being used in nearly every conference panel since 2019. For marketers, the development suggests that the creators they once engaged for single campaigns may now arrive at the table with business affairs departments of their own.
The creator, in other words, is no longer just talent. The creator is also management — and, increasingly, the person across the table asking about deal structure.
Original story published in adage.com: "Creator holding companies are the next phase of creator marketing - Ad Age"