This Future of Marketing Briefing covers the latest in marketing for Digiday+ members and is distributed over email every Friday at 10 a.m. ET. More from the series →Creator agencies are turning into entertainment studios.But unlike traditional studios, marketers are the ones footing the bill. More of them want to back up the “make content, not ads” mantra with actual budget, and that’s driving demand for specialist talent so high that creator agencies are either rebuilding themselves as entertainment companies or launching as one from day one.
Get it right and the payoff is real.
Harley Block, CEO of creator-focused media company IF7, points to its work with SharkNinja as proof. A $20 billion company “investing an enormous amount of money into the space,” he said, is running creator-first work alongside branded entertainment with production values he compares to a TV show rather than a phone-shot post.
That branded entertainment side leans on social publishers rather than creators, and the distinction matters to him. With a creator, the deal is straightforward: someone with their own following makes content with the brand and distributes it on their personal channels. A social publisher works differently — it behaves more like a digital TV network, building and evolving its own IP over time, with an established voice and a format people return to on a regular basis.
