Hey! Welcome back to the Creator Economy NYC newsletter, your weekly hit of insights and strategies to help you build, monetize, and scale as a creator.

I’m on my way back home from Cannes Lions (albeit delayed, given a flight cancellation), after hosting the Creator Beach all week, which honestly felt like a whole week of CENYC events.

A full week on the ground in the south of France, watching how the biggest brands, agencies, and creators in the world are thinking about what comes next.

Today's issue is my breakdown of the themes that kept coming up, the frameworks that actually landed, and what I think it means for you as a creator and marketer.

Let's get into it (plus, our next event below).

First, the most clear observation is that the room keeps getting bigger.

This was the second year Cannes Lions had a dedicated creator space. Last year it was on the rooftop of the Palais, tucked away, easy to miss, and genuinely brutal in the heat.

This year, Creator Beach had its own dedicated beachfront location in a far more prominent spot. Adobe, Manychat, and OpenAI were partners. Programming brought in voices like Steven Bartlett, Mel Robbins, iJustine, and Dan Clancy alongside CMOs from Dove, GAP, and Mercedes Benz.

The difference from year one was significant. Last year felt like marketers talking about creators. This year felt like creators and marketers finally talking together, with tactical sessions and roundtable formats that actually moved fast enough to be useful.

I think Creator Beach was one of the most underrated parts of the entire festival. And the reason it worked was the intimacy. Mel Robbins spoke on our stage with zero ropes and no security perimeter. I watched her speak elsewhere during the week, and it was a totally different experience. Here, after her session, she was just... accessible. The space was designed to create conversation, not spectatorship.

The feedback all week was overwhelmingly positive. People kept mentioning the range of topics, the quality of the speakers, and how rare it is to get that level of access without feeling like a second-tier attendee.

Now here are my five biggest takeaways, in partnership with our friends at Later:

Steven Bartlett said that in a world where a creator in Manhattan and a creator in Mumbai now have access to identical tools, the scarce resource is you.

AI accelerates iteration. It helps with production, ideation, and editing. What it cannot do is replace authentic storytelling rooted in actual lived experience.

Audiences already know the difference. They can feel the gap between content that was generated and content that made someone feel something. That gap is your competitive advantage, and it compounds over time. The longer you create with genuine specificity and perspective, the harder it becomes for anyone (or anything) to replicate what you do.

This was the most repeated theme across multiple sessions, and it came up in one of my favorite conversations of the week, with creative leaders from TBWA\Chiat\Day and digital creator Lauren W (@laurenthelolife).

The current model: brands treat creators as distribution channels. Hand them a brief. Get a post. Measure impressions.

The better model: treat creators as creative partners who unlock something the brand cannot do alone.

The framework that came out of that conversation was what we’d call the Superpower Brief, and it works like this:

When you start from that intersection, you stop putting words in the creator's mouth. The creative ideas flow naturally because they're actually true to both sides. Brands that do this get media-buy results and cultural resonance. Brands that don't get media-buy results only, and usually pay more to get less.

If you're a creator pitching brands right now, show them the intersection before they ask for it. It will separate you from 90% of the pitches they receive.

Creator Jun Yuh had an exceptional keynote that laid out a great content engine framework. Most creators default to one or two content modes and wonder why their growth stalls or their monetization feels like pushing a boulder uphill.

The four engines Jun went through (and they need to run simultaneously):

Here's what goes wrong when you skip one:

This came up across multiple conversations, including a sharp panel featuring Alexis Barber (Too Smart For This), Leslie Mosier (Doug the Pug), and Andrea Casanova (Ginger), moderated by Victoria Bachan of Hyphen.

The consensus was clear: a single sponsored post almost never builds the trust or drives the conversions that justify the creator's effort to close it. The math works out better for brands too, but most of them haven't done the math.

Four brand deals per month over 12 months consistently outperforms four one-off posts. The compounding effect of a creator's audience seeing a brand show up repeatedly, authentically, over time, is categorically different from a one-time placement.

What creators at the session pushed hard on: brands are leaving serious value on the table by not leveraging creators beyond a single post. Creators want access to studios, formats, networks, and series. They want to actually build something with the brand. Most brands offer a flat fee for a post and call it a partnership.

If you're a creator, start pitching retainers. If you're a brand, start asking what a long-term creative relationship would unlock. The math is better on both sides.

My favorite session of the week was with Mary Kish and Twitch CEO Dan Clancy. The conversation started around live content and ended up somewhere more interesting… around trust.

Gen Z and Gen Alpha already distrust whether what they're watching on social media is real. That skepticism is only growing as AI-generated content gets better. Live content is verifiable in a way that edited or AI-generated content is not. You cannot fake a live stream (or an IRL event). And that authenticity gap is accelerating demand for the format.

The numbers from Twitch made the point: average watch time on the platform is 72 minutes. What Twitch has built - the triangle of streamer, activity, and live chat - creates a sense of belonging that passive scrolling cannot replicate.

Dan Clancy said something worth sitting with: "What is trending tomorrow happened live on Twitch."

For brands, the implication is real. Moments, namely live moments, clip and travel far beyond the original audience. If you're building a brand strategy around impressions, you're optimizing for the wrong metric. Optimize for moments (which can be IRL moments too btw).

Walking away from this week, what struck me most was the shift in posture. A year ago, creators were still fighting to be taken seriously in rooms like Cannes. This year, they were running the conversations.

The brands, agencies, and platforms are all trying to figure out how to work with us better. That puts creators in a genuinely powerful position, but only if you understand what's actually being asked of you. Not distribution. Not reach. Partnership.

Your job is to show up knowing your superpower, running all four content engines, and pitching for the long game.

Start there.

Takeaways from Creator Beach featured remarks from: Steven Bartlett (Diary of a CEO), Mel Robbins, iJustine, Dan Clancy (Twitch CEO), Mary Kish (Twitch), Jun Yun, Janni Weederholm and Irina Kirvesmäki (TBWA\Chiat\Day LA), Lauren W (@laurenthelolife), Alexis Barber (Too Collective), Leslie Mosier (Doug the Pug), Andrea Casanova (Ginger), Victoria Bachan (Hyphen), and CMOs from Dove, GAP, and Mercedes Benz, among others. Credit to Cannes Lions for the images used.

Summer is in full swing and after a packed few months of events, launches, conferences, and creator chaos, we're bringing the community back together.

​Join Creator Economy NYC and our friends at TopFan for an evening of networking, conversation, and connection with creators, marketers, platforms, and industry leaders shaping what's next.

​We'll explore what it means to build a creator business that lasts, from audience ownership and direct fan relationships to creating opportunities beyond the platforms we rely on every day.

Oh, and it’s the night before Creator Economy LIVE East conference happening here in nyc (more on that next week).

The Creator Goal Setting Guide (FREE): A simple but powerful document to help you declare who you want to BECOME in 2026. Get it here.

The Creator Accountability System (FREE): Your visual companion for consistent creation in 2026. Get it here.

Hope that gave you a good window into what's happening at the highest levels of this industry. The beauty of what we do here is that these conversations don't just happen once a year in France… they happen every month, right here in NYC.

Grateful for you. See you next week.

F*ck It, Create It,

Brett

+ With research, interview and editorial support by Taylor Cromwell - a newsletter and creator economy expert and founder of Creator Diaries. Follow Taylor on LinkedIn.