THE CREATOR COMMUNITY AND THE ROLE OF BRANDS
With a hyper-growth in this newly created industry, how are brands, companies, and service platforms enabling the creators to fulfill their potential? How are the creators themselves building sustainable growth while telling human-centric stories and connecting purpose in business?
There are so many questions without too many answers.
The accelerated speed of growth in the creator community has allowed establishing clear directions to where, how, and what the ethical responsibilities of each part of this community are.
With this disruption in multiple industries comes a shift in power and control of the direct-to-consumer relationship. The real implications will directly impact how traditional brands market their products.
The digital creators have become enterprises, at times more prominent than international companies. For example, according to Yahoo, the Kardashians are now worth $1.4 billion, which again proves that people’s trust in brands is on its lowest level of all time. Hence, I pose the question:
WHAT ARE THE BRAND’S ROLE IN THE CREATOR COMMUNITY?
The creator community has been growing at lightning speed. The creators and online entrepreneurs collaborate and create value in a product or brand by sharing inside information, ideas, and business models. They have access to the latest technology and products, which allows them to curate the marketplace.
The market for personalized brands and products is expected to grow from $230 billion to more than $320 billion by 2025, fueling a surge of creators and entrepreneurs who sell direct-to-consumer products online without the need for brand e-commerce or physical brick and mortar retail.
The accelerated penetration of social commerce has supported both larger companies and individual sellers and creators worldwide. With a proven model and new investment coming from every direction, the Creator Community is realizing its ambitions of becoming a truly global industry by serving people anywhere in the world, anytime.
Given the uniqueness of the business model and an accelerated growth journey to date, individuals, like artists, designers, TikTokers, Youtubers, and niche brand owners, have attracted significant interest from the investor community.
The insertion of capital will allow every creator to focus on the opportunity ahead through geographic expansion and product diversification, accelerating the business’ market penetration and expansion.
Many consumers are unaware of the role of a brand in the industry. Brands hold a crucial role in the business world, and this is their opportunity to capitalize on winning back the market.
THE ROLE OF BRANDS
The last two years have leapfrogged industries and people into a more conscious future by increasing efforts towards a conscious kinship economy. We’re facing the problem that while everyone is more connected, they’re feeling more alone and with a level of stress they have never experienced.
Brands are now rethinking the traditional perspective of loyalty to service consumer needs from a lifestyle perspective, relating to their values, passions, and being part of their everyday routine.
Now, brands are simply inserting themselves into local communities versus trying to get people to come to the brand. The idea and belief that brands must act, think and speak as if they are a person will humanify their stories in a more personal and deeper level.
It is even more important to be of a city than to be at a city.
The community’s future will go from chasing status to sharing values and frequent transactions to real human connections. Brands want to leverage the opportunity to be part of people’s lives and bring meaning to the world through every community in the world.
In order to build human-centric connections, brands need to know people in order to serve them. And, increasing daily brand engagement and having access to first-party data will cement every brand’s ability to form a lasting relationship with people.
Platform companies such as Shopify and Etsy have paved the way for these companies to sell their products, and the likes of Stripe and Adyen have solved the issues of online payments. Marketplace platforms give these platforms an instant global reach through local production and distribution anywhere, anytime.
Other platforms, such as Spotify, give their listeners the ability to listen to personalized playlists with soundtracks that complement their music taste. Spotify also sends out yearly summaries of what each listener liked most that year, along with how many hours they listened to and a recommendation for new artists and songs.
Here is my Spotify Top Songs of 2021 playlist made just for me. How can you not love this personal and human aspect of Spotify.
They call it “Spotify Wrapped,” and send it out to all listeners at the end of each calendar year. Many people will repost their Spotify Wrap on Instagram stories, further promoting Spotify and their community.
This offers a fantastic two-way relationship and it delivers precisely against the idea of building a kinship community. It also keeps their listeners coming back, and the constant promotion of new artists and songs keeps their creators coming back. Spotify collects data on its listeners and evaluates its target audiences, allowing them to understand their market better and accommodate their community of listeners.
Brands in this new realm of the world should try to create social connections for people and allow them to belong to something bigger than just giving them access to products.
Brands should not force themselves on consumers; instead, they need to bring the brand to the people. Instead of sending out a discount code to consumers, use digital technology to give consumers personalized experiences to connect their voice and leverage inspiration from every person.
This fresh and human approach will help create a unique and diverse community for brands to connect with people.
