McKinsey’s latest report imagines the future of marketing in the age of AI. Creators aren’t part of the plan.

The pitch to CMOs is that brands need to become “consumable” and “trusted by machines”.  McKinsey envisions five new AI-marketing roles, and none of them touch creator/influencer. My read:  their AI agent plan will disintermediate influencer trust, and they envision new gatekeepers which will disrupt algorithmic discovery.  The word “creator” doesn’t even show up in the report, and “influencer” appears just once.  

Read between the lines and there’s at least some hope for creators in McKinsey’s otherwise dystopian view of the future. 

Brands are still struggling with internal skills development, and that buys creators time. My advice: focus on verifiable claims, specs, and structured comparisons in brand deals, not just charisma and parasocial trust. There are other contradictions in the report too, as the report claims 4-7% revenue growth and 60-70% savings on execution-related tasks…  while less than 10% of companies have scaled anything or captured any real value.

Remember that this is a consulting company trying to sell expensive engagements with CMOs in a time when AI is eating into their billable hours.  But it’s always good for creator-first businesses to understand how the oracles of organizational efficiency are pitching their demise. (McKinsey)

Outside Tonight, the late-night talk show officially supported by YouTube and created/hosted by Recess Theory’s Julian Shapiro-Barnum, finally debuts. It’s just weekly for now, but the potential is high.

Interestingly, the show had a prominent launch at YouTube’s Created Premieres event last fall.  That led many to believe it was funded by Big Red. The answer?  Not exactly.  This is not a return to YouTube Originals, but a test case of whether YouTube’s platform power can help propel new series to success. YouTube likely played a major role in landing Amazon and Chase as launch sponsors, along with helping the show land a prominent piece in the New York Times ($).  Oh, and it didn’t hurt that YouTube published Shapiro-Barnum’s launch post as well. 

Give it a watch as this platform-power case study with a TBPN-style vibe plays-out live.    (YouTube, Late Nighter, YouTube Official Blog, NYT-$)

Regular readers know I’m a big fan of @Doug Shapiro. He is one of the clearest thinkers on where the creator and the media economy are headed.  He just posted his framework for interpreting new events, laying out the concepts, assumptions and relationships that drive his thinking.   

Doug explores what looks like a contradiction: attention fragmenting while power concentrates. But it’s one dynamic.  Today’s audiences are embracing an exploding world of deep fandom, but the power-law networks distributing it deliver most of the attention to an increasingly small set of winners.  From my perspective, blockbusters still matter, whether in the theater or on YouTube.  But tapping into this diffusion of fandom means you don’t have to be Taylor Swift or Jimmy Donaldson to succeed.   The power law doesn’t obviate the ROI, because passionate communities can deliver outsized revenue…  even if only 50,000 are paying attention.

Shapiro raises an interesting question in his prediction section: could an emerging AI discovery layer swing more attention to the long tail? If so, then the two pull apart and the abandoned middle matters again.

Other predictions? As abundant AI reduces the cost of making human-first content, video, newsletters, podcasts and more become a cost center, not a profit center.  This is already happening, as I laid out on June 22^nd when I explored Tim Ferriss’ cratering book sales, and his new focus on 10,000 true superfans.  Every single creator needs to look at what they create and ask themselves: “If I never made another dime on sponsorships or ad revenue, would I still have a business?”

Want to know where the world is going?  The whole thing deserves a critical read to help you build your own Mental Model of the future.  (The Mediator)

We Trust AI As Much as Humans:  Dan Frommer’s latest Consumer Trends Report, co-produced with Coefficient Capital, covers a lot of ground, but for the creator economy, the biggest finding is that AI bots are now just as trusted as creators when it comes to grocery recommendations…  and AI wins out 45% to 39% when it comes to supplements.  Two thirds of weekly active AI users have also purchased something their chatbots recommended, vs just over a third of Gen X and older.   This even as the study finds GenZ’s AI sentiment continues to decline.

What it means: AI now competes with creators for trust and affiliate fees, yet humans have to use an #AD designation for brand deals and AI does not. I worry that as this trend accelerates it will devalue creators.  Recently I’ve also seen some breathless and biased Gemini results from simple queries, so perhaps the pendulum will swing back.  

The report also shows that smaller and more specialized health creators offer more bang for the targeting buck than broader creators like Joe Rogan, more evidence that reach is not a panacea.  There’s lots more inside, mostly focused on peptides and GLP-1s.  The data is from an opt-in panel so it’s highly directional, but not completely predictive – Consumer Trends Report

How To Cripple Your TikTok: Researchers from USC just found that labelling a post “Made With AI” on Double-T delivers 7-9% lower likes, comments and shares.  But it’s more about perceived lack of effort than the AI itself, a modern day “garbage in, garbage out” effect that weakens the parasocial relationship.

I suspect it’s similar across other platforms too.  To counter this, don’t just be transparent, but share how hard you worked to produce your piece even if AI had a helping hand.  The research notes that “Made with Photoshop Neural Filters” performed about the same as no disclosure.   (Journal of Consumer Research)

Creators Own GenZ Marketing:  Creators are great for top-of-funnel product discovery.  But a recent YouGov study quantified their value.  In the US 27% of all adults discover new products to buy via creators.  That seems significant, but at number nine on the list, it pales in comparison to recommendations from people we know, browsing in stores and online product reviews.  But the demographic breakout tells a different story.  For GenZ, creators pop up into the top four.  YouGov’s list of top 20 highest rated creators include MatPat, Mark Rober and The Try Guys.  Interestingly Kylie Kelce is also on the list, meaning the Kelce brothers are now married to two of the biggest influencers in the land (congrats Taylor and Travis). YouGov is a legit research org, and even though the methodology lacks a confidence interval, it can be considered highly directional and mostly predictive towards its US 18+ audience. (YouGov) 

LinkedIn’s new creator marketplace helps you find B2B creators to partner with.  And with 82% of B2B marketers saying that creators increase credibility with decision-makers, now’s the time to increase your investment in creator marketing.  Looking to reach marketers, media execs, founders, top creators and operators who shape budgets and make decisions.   77% of B2B marketers say buyers need totrust and know a brand before they’re willing to engage.  And guess what?  I’m open for business!

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100% written by me. AI was used for light editing, grammar and spelling mistakes… and challenging my assumptions. No human or AI ghostwriters were involved (except for the cover art!).

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