The girls with ring lights. The affiliate codes. The “link in bio.” The smoothie ads. The Revolve trips. The perfectly casual mirror selfie that was, of course, not casual at all.

For a long time, it was easy to act like the whole thing was unserious.

People who “just posted online.” Girls who made money taking pictures of their outfits. An entire industry that serious business people treated like a sideshow.

And while everyone was laughing, influencers were quietly becoming some of the most powerful people in business.

That is the part nobody really wants to say out loud.

Because underneath the selfies, the unboxings, the “you guys have been asking,” and the discount codes, a generation of creators was doing something most companies spend millions trying to figure out.

They were learning what people want.

In real time.

Every day.

They were testing products, language, aesthetics, price points, trends, and desire directly with an audience that actually cared what they had to say. They knew what made people click, what made them buy, what made something feel aspirational, what made something feel cringe, and what made a product suddenly feel like it belonged in your life.

They weren’t just building followings.

They were building taste.

They were building trust.

They were building leverage.

And now the business world is trying to buy its way into all three.

Era I: The Creator

The first era of the creator economy was simple.

Brands paid creators to post. Creators posted. Everyone moved on.

It was transactional, and everyone knew it.

A brand sends a product. A creator made a TikTok with said product. A discount code appeared. The brand got awareness. The creator got a check. The audience got a product recommendation that may or may not have been “genuinely life-changing.”

At the time, this looked like advertising.

But what brands were actually renting was much more valuable than reach.

They were renting trust.

Years of accumulated, specific, personal trust between a creator and an audience that actually listened.

That trust is hard to build and extremely easy to underestimate. It does not come from a media buy. It does not come from a campaign brief. It does not come from a brand deck where the word “community” appears 47 times.

It comes from showing up over and over again until people feel like they know you.

And once people feel like they know you, they are far more likely to care about what you like.

That was the first real unlock.

Influencers were not valuable because they had attention.

They were valuable because they could move attention.

And for a while, brands got an incredible deal. They paid once, borrowed the creator’s credibility, and kept all the upside.

Then creators started realizing something.

Wait.

Why am I making everyone else rich?

Era II: The Founder

The second era was the obvious next step.

Creators looked at the audiences they had built, the products they were already selling for other people, and the taste they had spent years refining, and decided to stop renting it out.

They became the brand.

Rhode. Skims. Chamberlain Coffee. O.piccola. Parke. The list keeps growing.

These companies became the blueprint because they proved the uncomfortable part: sometimes the influencer understands the customer better than the people in the boardroom.

For years, brands paid creators to borrow their taste. Then creators realized they could stop being the ad and become the business.

That is the real shift.

The smartest creators did not just monetize attention.

They converted attention into ownership.

And when it works, it really works.

A creator-led brand is not powerful simply because a famous person puts her name on something. That version is actually the least interesting version. The better version happens when the product feels like a natural extension of the world the creator has already built.

The audience already understands the taste.

The product just gives them a way to buy into it.

That is why the best creator-led brands are not just products. They are worlds. They give people a way to participate in a creator’s aesthetic, routine, identity, or point of view.

This is why the creator-to-founder pipeline became so obvious. A great creator already knows how to package desire. They know how to make something feel relevant. They know what people are tired of, what they secretly want, and what will look good on a bathroom counter.

That last part sounds shallow until you remember that half of consumer business is just making people want the thing badly enough to buy it.

But the founder era also revealed something important.

Not every creator wants to be an operator.

And honestly, why would they?

Building a brand is not just moodboards and launch parties. It is inventory, margins, supply chains, customer service, hiring, cash flow, fulfillment issues, product development, and realizing that the font you loved on the deck looks terrible on packaging.

Being good at taste does not automatically mean you want to run an entire company.

For a long time, the obvious advice to influencers was: launch a brand. You have the audience, you have the taste, you have the trust, so put your name on a product and sell it yourself.

And sometimes, that works beautifully.

But it also asks creators to become something completely different. A founder. A manager. A logistics person. A hiring person. A customer service department. A person who suddenly has to care deeply about margins, packaging delays, inventory, and whether a manufacturer in another time zone has answered an email.

Not every creator wants that.

And not every creator should.

So the industry evolved again.

And this is where it gets more interesting.

Era III: The Investor

Creators are becoming angel investors.

Not just faces of brands.

Not just ambassadors brought in after the product is already finished.

Not just the girl holding the can, the lip gloss, the supplement, the shoe, the app, the whatever.

They are becoming early believers with actual ownership.

They are joining cap tables. Advising founders. Helping shape how companies enter culture before anyone else knows they exist.

And once you see the logic, it is almost embarrassingly obvious.

Founders raise money, build a product, and then spend a huge amount of time and money trying to get creators to make people care.

So why not bring the creator in earlier?

Why wait until the product is finished, the campaign is briefed, and the entire brand has already been defined?

A creator can tell you what feels dated before the market does. She can tell you which language sounds fake, which product detail actually matters, and why one brand feels like it has momentum while another feels like it was assembled in a conference room.

That is not just marketing.

That is intelligence.

For years, brands treated that intelligence like something they could rent for thirty days and a usage fee.

Now, creators are realizing it is worth owning against.

A paid partnership ends when the campaign does.

Equity compounds.

That is the difference.

The richest influencers are not getting rich because they post more than everyone else. They are getting rich because they figured out how to stop being paid once and start owning the upside.

That is the part that matters.

A creator does not always need to carry the operational burden of building the company herself. She does not need to become the CEO, COO, customer service department, and packaging intern all at once. She can do something more strategic.

She can own a piece of the thing her taste helps make valuable.

That shift changes the entire power dynamic.

A brand deal says: we will pay you to talk about us.

Equity says: we believe your influence can help build the value of this company.

Those are not the same thing.

One treats the creator like media.

The other treats the creator like capital.

And that is why this next era feels so different. The creator is no longer the last stop in the marketing plan. She is moving upstream, closer to the product, closer to the founder, closer to the decision-making, and closer to the upside.

The old model was: make something, then hire creators to sell it.

The new model is: bring creators in early enough to help decide why anyone should care.

That is a very different kind of power.

Era IV: The Chief Creator Officer

This is why the rise of the Chief Creator Officer title feels significant.

Not because the title itself is perfect. It is a little clunky. It sounds like something invented during a very long brand strategy meeting.

But the title admits something important.

A creator’s instincts about culture are not decorative.

Their feel for what an audience wants is not a soft skill.

Their ability to explain why anyone should care about a product is not just “content.”

It is business strategy.

For years, brands treated creators like distribution channels. Useful, yes. Powerful, maybe. But still external. Still something to rent.

Now, the smartest companies are realizing creators should not just be brought in after the product exists.

They can help shape what gets built.

They can help decide how it gets positioned.

They can help make people care before a traditional marketing team has even finished arguing over the tagline.

The difference sounds subtle, but it is huge.

A creator does not just bring an audience. She brings proof that an audience already trusts her judgment.

That trust can mean faster distribution.

Better feedback.

More efficient customer acquisition.

A clearer read on what people actually want.

And maybe most importantly, a way to make a product feel culturally alive.

Because the hardest thing for a brand to buy is not reach. Reach is everywhere. You can pay for reach.

The hardest thing to buy is relevance.

That is why the business world suddenly seems very interested in the same people it used to dismiss.

The joke was that influencers did not have real jobs.

The reality is that they were doing one of the most valuable jobs in consumer business: figuring out what people want.

Era V: Taste

And then, of course, there is AI.

Because no modern story about the internet is complete without the looming presence of a machine that can write your caption, generate your campaign concept, and produce 400 versions of the same beige product review before lunch.

AI is going to make content faster.

Cheaper.

More optimized.

More endless.

Which means the internet is about to become even more crowded than it already is.

More reviews. More recommendations. More “honest thoughts.” More perfectly edited videos. More captions that sound human but somehow feel like they were assembled in a lab.

In that world, the rarest thing will not be content.

It will be taste.

Not taste as in “I like pretty things.”

Taste as in judgment.

Knowing what is actually good. Knowing what is over. Knowing what is about to matter. Knowing the difference between something with real cultural momentum and something that just has expensive packaging.

AI can generate a campaign.

It can mimic a format.

It can write a caption.

It can make a product review sound convincing enough.

But it cannot replicate the slow accumulation of trust between a creator and an audience.

It cannot know why one product feels tired and another feels right.

It cannot understand why one founder feels magnetic and another feels like they were focus-grouped into existence.

It cannot manufacture the tiny, irrational, deeply human instinct that makes people say, “Wait, I need that.”

That is where creators become harder to replace, not easier.

Because the best creators are not just content machines. They are filters.

They tell people what is worth noticing.

And in an internet where everything can be generated, filtered taste becomes more valuable.

The creator who has spent years building an audience has also spent years running a one-person consumer research lab. Every post is a test. Every comment section is data. Every failed launch, viral video, sold-out product, and weirdly specific audience reaction becomes part of a larger instinct.

That instinct is hard to teach.

It is even harder to fake.

And it may become one of the most valuable assets in business.

Because when everything can be made quickly, the question is no longer who can make more.

It is who knows what should exist in the first place.

That is the future I find most interesting.

Not influencers as walking billboards.

Not influencers as people who got lucky because they were pretty on the internet.

But creators as taste-makers, investors, founders, advisors, and cultural operators who understand demand before the market does.

The Chief Creator Officer is not the end of the story.

It is just the first title.

If the last decade was about creators monetizing attention, the next decade will be about creators monetizing influence itself.

And the smartest ones will not just be paid to post about the next big thing.

They will own a piece of it.

xx,
Alex

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Eldor, Karin. “The Rise Of The Chief Creator Officer And The Creator Angel Investor.” Forbes, June 1, 2026. Available at: https://www.forbes.com/sites/karineldor/2026/06/01/the-rise-of-the-chief-creator-officer-and-the-creator-angel-investor/

Another blush. Another highlighter. Another oversized branded sweatsuit.

At some point, it starts to feel less like innovation and more like Taco Bell: the same ingredients, repackaged in slightly different forms.

A Crunchwrap. A quesadilla. A burrito. Technically different. Fundamentally identical.

The modern celebrity consumer brand ecosystem often works the same way.

Many beauty and fashion products are not developed from scratch by the celebrity whose name is attached to them. Instead, they are produced through private-label or contract manufacturing systems, where third-party manufacturers create formulations or products that brands can customize through packaging, branding, minor formulation tweaks, and marketing narratives.

This does not mean every celebrity product is identical. Some brands genuinely invest in proprietary R&D, product development, testing, and differentiated formulations. But many newer influencer-led brands rely heavily on existing manufacturing infrastructure because it dramatically lowers barriers to entry.

In other words: launching a brand has never been easier.

The global beauty industry alone is projected to generate over $670 billion in revenue in 2025, reflecting just how lucrative consumer product categories have become, particularly as celebrity and influencer-led brands continue to capitalize on social commerce and personal branding.

This explains the explosion.

Celebrity brands are no longer primarily about product invention. They are often media businesses disguised as product businesses.

When I first became an influencer, I had the same thought many creators do: Wouldn’t it be cool to launch a brand?

So I started researching what it actually takes.

What surprised me was how accessible the process was.

Entire ecosystems exist to help creators launch products with relatively little operational complexity. Manufacturers already have ready-made formulas, packaging suppliers, fulfillment partners, and white-label production systems waiting. The celebrity brings the audience. The infrastructure already exists.

Which raises an uncomfortable question:

Are consumers buying innovation, or are they buying affiliation?

Because much of celebrity commerce is less about solving a consumer problem and more about selling identity.

We are not just buying blush.

We are buying proximity to Hailey Bieber.

We are not just buying a hoodie.

We are buying cultural belonging.

This is what makes celebrity consumerism so effective. The product itself can be secondary.

And while fashion and beauty are not inherently problematic industries, hyper-consumerism becomes concerning when consumers are repeatedly encouraged to purchase slightly differentiated versions of things they already own.

Another neutral lip liner.

Another “clean girl” serum.

Another activewear set.

Especially when many formulations or garments may come from overlapping supply chains.

Fashion manufacturing, in particular, is deeply consolidated globally, with production concentrated in a relatively small number of manufacturing hubs. Counterfeit and imitation goods further complicate this ecosystem, with the OECD estimating global trade in counterfeit and pirated goods at approximately $467 billion annually, demonstrating how standardized and replicable branded consumer goods have become.

Of course, branding matters. Product experience matters. Design matters.

A formula with similar ingredients is not automatically identical in performance.

Execution matters.

But consumers should be honest about what they are actually paying for.

Because increasingly, the premium is often narrative.

Not chemistry.

Not fabric innovation.

Narrative.

And I say this with self-awareness, because I am absolutely guilty of it too.

I love beautiful branding. I love aesthetics. I love packaging.

Consumer psychology works because it works.

But perhaps the better consumer strategy is not endlessly chasing novelty.

Instead, find the products that genuinely work for you.

The skin care brand whose ingredients actually benefit your skin.

The denim brand whose fit consistently flatters you.

The handbag you wear for years instead of trend-churning replacements.

The few things that become staples instead of seasonal dopamine hits (guilty).

Celebrity brands are not inherently bad.

Some are genuinely excellent.

But in a world where attention has become infinitely monetizable, consumers should ask one simple question before clicking checkout:

Am I buying a product, or an identity?

xx,
Alex

References

Grand View Research. (2024). Private label cosmetics market size, share & trends analysis report.

Khamis, S., Ang, L., & Welling, R. (2017). Self-branding, ‘micro-celebrity’ and the rise of social media influencers. Celebrity Studies, 8(2), 191–208.

McKinsey & Company. (2023). The beauty market in 2023: A special state of fashion report.

Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. (2021). Global trade in counterfeit and pirated goods: Trends and challenges.

Statista. (2025). Beauty & personal care market worldwide.